Memorial Day

Spent the entire day yesterday at the ancestral roots of my family, the South Bronx. Why couldn't it have been the Hamptons?

There is a park at Longfellow and Bryant named after my great-grandfather James, who ran away from the Bronx to Boston to join the Union Army. He got through the war, and was at Bull Run and Sheridan's ride through the Shenandoah Valley after Jeb Stuart. He escaped from Libby Prison. Later he was in command of an escort for President Lincoln and witnessed the surrender at Appamatox. He returned to the Bronx and had thirteen children, including seven sons. We put a wreath in the park every Memorial Day and then have a barbecue on City Island. It is, for us, less of an opportunity for shopping or beachgoing than a solemn but lonely occassion. Back in the sixties the park would be full of WWII veterans in their overseas caps paying tribute and we would go to a VFW post near Crains Square for a big party, but the veterans of that war have moved to the suburbs or died. Now the only people that come are family.