Echoes of the Past, Hope for the Future

Two months ago, I stood in the cemetery at the Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia and looked out at the rows and rows of nearly identical white gravestones. My paternal great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, stood in that cemetery in November 1906 with other members of the 51st Iowa Regimental Band, his cornet to his lips. At the close of a memorial service for Iowa soliders who died in the prison camp at Andersonville, G. Oliver played “Taps.”

The Iowa Memorial in the Andersonville cemetery.

Earlier today, I stood in the Northfield Armory, the rain location for the 2015 Memorial Day Tribute to All Veterans. The building was packed with people of all ages, from infant to centenarian, and members of the Northfield High School band provided music for the occasion. At the close of the service, I listened as my older son, Sebastian, played “Echo Taps” with fellow trumpet player Jarrett Croy.

If I could have been in two places at once today, I also could have listened to my dad play “Echo Taps” at a cemetery in Alexandria, as he does every year.

Sebastian after the event at the armory.

Participating in Memorial Day services is a long-established tradition in the Riggs family, going back to the time the holiday was known by its earlier name, Decoration Day. The holiday started as a way of honoring Civil War soldiers, and it was meaningful to G. Oliver because his dad, Jasper Riggs, and several of his uncles had fought to preserve the Union.

G. Oliver was 16 — the same age Sebastian is now — when he began playing for Decoration Day services. Except for the time he was in the hospital recovering from typhoid, he continued to participate every year, as a performer or band director, until he retired as director of the St. Cloud Municipal Band in 1944.

I teared up several times today at the Northfield event, mostly during the speeches by eighth-grader Reed Roney and high school senior Erin Hahn. Hearing the eloquent words they had written about what Memorial Day means to them, as young people who have not experienced war themselves, gave me hope for our country’s future.

Their speeches also brought to mind a speech that G. Oliver heard in 1906 — not at Andersonville, but at Shiloh National Military Park, another stop on the battlefield tour. During the dedication of a memorial to the Sixth Iowa Regiment, Jesse A. Miller, the son of the regiment’s colonel, said:

“I, as one who was born after the war, as one who knows nothing of the war except what I have heard and read, feel that I am a better man and will live a better life for having visited these battlefields ... I hope that as the days go by and as the years roll on ... these memorials will ever tend to raise the citizenship of this country and make the people of this nation a better and higher type of civilization than any that has gone before.”

As someone who also knows nothing of war, except what I have heard and read, I feel that I am a better person because of the veterans I have known in my life, and those I wish I could have known. As the days go by and the years roll on, I will be forever grateful.