{"id":46,"date":"2014-05-25T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T20:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/2014\/05\/25\/memorial-day-weekend\/"},"modified":"2014-05-25T15:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T20:26:00","slug":"memorial-day-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/2014\/05\/25\/memorial-day-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Day Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as Grandma Violet used to call it, gives us a chance to reminisce about people and places. It has always been a tradition for me to stop by the cemeteries around here.  Even when Ken was playing softball and the kids had games (which always included the three-day Memorial Day weekend), I would take some time during the week before or after to visit the graves.  Now that we no longer have any active athletes living at home, Ken and I both go.  This year we decided to go out on Saturday. There are fewer people and the weather forecast looked good.  <\/span><\/span>
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We started out by heading to Lincoln Memorial first.  We took flowers for Grandma Violet and Grandpa Buck\u2019s graves.  We also take flowers for Uncle Jerry too. There are other relatives there too, Uncle Dick and my Great Grandma Pralle (one of my favorite Grandmothers).  I know that there are other relatives at Lincoln Memorial, I just don\u2019t remember where they are buried. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Then we drove to the Emerald Cemetery. I had plenty of iris this year so I cut some to put on Dad\u2019s grave.  <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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  For as long as I can remember I have always loved to go to the Emerald Cemetery. Mom and Dad would take all of us kids to the cemetery to put fresh flowers on the graves.  There\u2019s not hydrant there so we would have to take a container of water. We could stand on that hill and look over miles of farmland.  Looking to the West we could see Lorenzo\u2019s beautiful house and farm. Lorenzo Lee was married to my Great-Aunt Emmy. Their house was painted white with beautiful flowers and trees around it. The out buildings were all painted up and the  corrals and fences were in perfect shape. When we would leave the cemetery, Dad would head in the opposite direction as home and he would ask if we should go see Luke. All of us kids would ask . . . \u201cwhose Luke?\u201d Luke was the nickname of our Uncle Earl (Dad\u2019s oldest brother).  He and my Aunt Irma lived on a farm between the cemetery and the town of Pleasant Dale. We always loved to visit Irma and Earl\u2019s. Aunt Irma always had fresh baked goods, fruit and koolaid when we stopped by.  We loved running around their farmyard.  This was back in the days when farmers did a little of everything.  Uncle Earl was a row crop farmer. He also raised cattle, some that he milked, he had pigs, chickens and horses. We lived on an acreage so this was like heaven to us kids. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Anyway, the cemetery was beautiful. Jeff Borgman is the caretaker now and he does a great job. His grandparents are Earl and Irma and Jeff says when he’s mowing he takes a little time to just sit and talk with them.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Another thing that I really love about this cemetery is seeing all of my relatives, close and distant, buried here. It makes me think of True Grit when Maddie Ross is walking through her family cemetery with Rooster Cogburn. She offers him a chance to be buried there next to her and she says \u201cIt\u2019s comforting to know where we will meet eternity.\u201d As you look down the line of headstones you can see my whole family. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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The first stone is for my Grandparents, Christian and Clara Borgman. My grandfather died when I was 1 or 2 of cancer, but I do remember going to feed the chickens with him once.<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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<\/span><\/span> Next is my Uncle John who died in WWII. They say he threw himself on a hand-granade to save his comrades. Even though I never met him, I always felt he set a high standard to live by.  To be able to love another person so strongly that you could give up your life for them. <\/span><\/span>

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This is my cousin Donald Clement, better known as Clem. He died the day that Ken and I got married. (One of  his nieces was our flower girl.) There was some controversy when he died, they didn’t know for a while if he was shot by someone or if  he committed suicide.  They determined that the wound was self-inflicted<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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This is my Aunt Betty (Clem’s Mom and one of  Dad’s sisters) who also died of cancer.  We spent a lot of time with her and her kids when I was growing up.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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This is one of my cousin’s sons who died in a traffic accident outside of Crete.  He was laid to rest next to Aunt Betty, which is his Grandma.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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These are my Great-Grandparents Gerdena and Herman Borgman. I knew Grandma Dena. At one time I was lucky enough to have five living grandmothers.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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One of the last ones in this row is Aunt Emmy and Uncle Lorenzo Lee.  Their headstone is facing West. I guess he can look out over the farm fields and see his house and buildings. Although they are not nearly as beautiful and well maintained as when they lived there.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Other family members buried there include Dad’s brother Ivan, his sister Virginia Baker and her husband Orv, Earl and Irma and the rest of the Lee family.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Next we headed to Fairbury.  Just as you enter the second driveway at the Fairbury Cemetery, that he where Ken’s Grandma Kahle is buried right next to her parents <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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This is Grandma Kahle, mother of Charles, Dick, Mike, Kay and <\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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Next to Grandma Kahle are her parents, Elsie and Henry Webb. Buried next to them is Aunt Jennie and Uncle Leslie Webb.  Uncle Leslie used to be the caretaker there at the cemetery.  I remember Aunt Jennie as being a big lady.  When I used to do the family geneology, A.M. would ask Aunt Jennie questions about the family for me.  I guess she knew all of the family secrets.  Unfortunately, she took most of them to her grave.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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This year Ken bought an angel that is solar lighted for his Mom’s grave. I wish we could be there some night after dark to see it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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The American flag is for Charlie and the blue flag is for A.M. since she was a part of the VFW Auxiliary. Up until her death she would go out just before Memorial Day with the other Auxiliary members to help put flags on all of the veteran’s graves.  The Fairbury Cemetery is pretty big so that was quite a chore.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Next to Charles and AM is AM’s parents, Agnes and John and her sister Marie who died in a car accident.<\/span><\/span>

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We spent some time walking around looking for Uncle Bernard’s grave and we finally found it.  Then we headed to the newer part of the cemetery to visit Andy’s grave.  Buried not too far from Andy is Lori Muller, Tony’s first wife.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Jim and Diane were there also, Jim and Ken took off walking, reading the headstones and talking about the people they knew as they went along.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Later, Ken and I stopped at Ray’s grocery to pick up some fried chicken and we went to Crystal Springs to have a picnic.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Many years ago, at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, it used to be a tradition for families to take a picnic lunch to the cemetery. It was almost like a family reunion of sorts.  It’s sad to see that visiting cemeteries and paying respects to those who gave their lives for our freedom is not much of a tradition anymore.  Ken was talking at work with some of the people there and they asked what we were going to do over the long weekend.  When Ken told them we would spend one day visiting cemeteries, their reply was “oh, you really do that?”<\/span><\/span>

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Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as Grandma Violet used to call it, gives us a chance to reminisce about people and places. It has always been a tradition for me […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-webmaster","post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steele.farm\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}