whit

I've been a huge freak about backing up my documents for as long as I have had computers. The oldest document on my computer right now is a Microsoft Word 97 file dated 6/1/1993. It's a letter to the editor from my late mother, a devoted letter to the editor writer (she would have had a great blog), about teaching me about Memorial Day in the two years that she homeschooled me due to my circadian rhythm disorder. The letter is below. Weird 25 year old MS Word artifacts preserved for flavor.

I'm grateful for this prompt making me find this and read it again for the first time in 30 years. It's coming up on the 15th anniversary of my mom's death, and my heart aches beautifully to read her words again.

microblogvember prompts

1¾ « . & ( ( * + + NORMAL.STY PANA1092, @ ¸ Ð ) ( * µ Memorial Day Lessons in Home School
By Sheri Reynolds
May 31, 1993

Home school allows for such freedom and flexibility! Sheri and Whitney's Year-Round, Break-the-Mold, Multi-Cultural, Home School for the Arts has been in session for almost a year now. People often ask if we are required to follow a state approved curriculum. No, we're not. Most home schoolers do adopt some type of formal instruction, but basically, I prefer to just make it up as we go along. Whitney and I have learned much and we don't get bored.

Just before Memorial Day I asked my eleven- year- old daughter if she knew why we celebrated this holiday. She didn't have a clue. It was a day off from work and school when businesses had sales, swimming pools opened and some people went on a picnic. Yes, here was a home school opportunity. Out with the encyclopedia and my four year collection of Kay Beasley's "Nashville Past" articles from the Banner. We studied, made plans, and I reminisced.

Memorial Day in my small hometown was a Norman Rockwell experience. The high school band led a parade from one end of town to the cemetery at the other end. Kids decorated their bikes with red, white and blue crepe paper and followed the marching veterans. Deserving high school students memorized and recited "The Gettysburg Address" and "In Flanders Field". After the twenty-one gun salute (which was really only four or five guns), a bugler played taps. A dramatic end was supplied by a member of the band who had gone down into the woods to play a complete echo of taps.

The Memorial Day of my youth was truly a Decoration Day for all the graves. Many tombstones were adorned by the hundreds of geraniums my dad grew and sold in his retail greenhouses each May. My mother, the florist, made dozens of fresh floral arrangements in approved cemetery containers. We had to deliver these to the graveyard the night before the big event. What an adventure to stumble through the cemetery with flashlights searching for the correct tombstones.

Such vivid memories and my daughter knew nothing of this day! A remedy was provided with our trip to the Nashville National Cemetery on Memorial Day, 1993.

The service was a bit disappointing for me. No band, high school or military. Too many long-winded introductions and too much obligatory applause for the multitude of dignitaries on stage. But Senator Henry gave a rousing speech about brave Tennesseans, and a lone bugler played taps.

If the ceremony wasn't particular memorable, the rows and rows of 33,000 graves certainly made an impression. From our studies Whitney and I knew that the old L&N railroad through the middle of the cemetery was intentional. The civil war general who chose the site wanted to remind passengers of the sacrifices made for the preservation of the Union. Recent tombstones listed as many as three wars for one soldier. Near the exit I saw a middle-age man kneeling, wiping away tears as his wife comforted him. That was more heart rendering and dramatic than an echo of taps from the woods.

The final stop on our home school field trip, after a brief drive though Springhill Cemetery, was the Old City Cemetery. What a contrast! Although the main gate was unlocked and an American flag had been raised on the central flagpole, there wasn't a single graveside flag, and there were only two or three small flower arrangements on some newer graves. The tomb of Gen. Felix Zollicoffer, the first Confederate officer killed in the Civil Was, the tomb of General James Robertson, and the tomb of Gov. William Carroll were noted with a special marker, but were undecorated.

Whitney was excited to discover Mayor Ben West's grave. After our study of and visit to the Banner's recent photoexhibit she was aware of Mayor West's role in desegregation. We were a bit sad to see no wreaths or flowers on his grave. Maybe flowers just get stolen.

As we left we determined the next topic of study for home school: Jubilee Hall and the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Kay Beasley's article states that Ella Sheppard, a former slave and one of the original Jubilee singers, is buried in the Old City Cemetery. We're going to find out more about Ella, figure out where her grave is, and next Memorial Day we're going to take some flowers there in her memory.

Perhaps more Nashvillians will be inspired to take flowers or flags to some of the other forgotten graves of Nashville's Old Cemetery for Memorial Day, 1994. We hope so.

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