Yesterday I was invited to preside at an interment of one of our parishioners. Jack was a long-time parishioner, active in several ministries, and was a retired US Air Force Colonel. His burial was at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. The tradition includes a procession of cars from the Administration Building (with very nice family waiting rooms) to a “transfer point” where we met the marching band and the honor guard.The route from the transfer point to the grave site was through the older sections of Arlington. The images we usually see are the classic row-upon-row of headstones.

But there are the older sections, the original 13 sections in which private headstones (markers) were authorized. All those sections have been filled since 2017. The private markers were not for VIPs-only.  Any veteran or family member was eligible to request one at a loved one’s time of need. Historically, during and after the Civil War, families that could afford a private marker would often choose a custom headstone as an emblem of honor and status; in the older sections of the cemetery, there are large and often ornate headstones, many created by renowned artists. Today, however, the modern headstones do not indicate rank or wealth.

As the Air Force personnel marched ahead, we slowly followed in the cars. We were in the older sections and there was plenty of time to read the headstones along the way. The markings on the headstones are “chapters” in the American story – men and women who served in wartime and eras of peace – and the loved ones who waited for them. There were single people most of whom had recorded deaths in the middle of the first and second world wars of the 20th century. There were husbands and wives, and again the misfortunes of war shone with one spouse finally laid to rest 40 and 50 years after their loved one.

In one section, there was a number of graves of young Marines who date of passing was June 1918. I imagine they died in the Battle of Belleau Wood in France., one of the defining moments of the US Marine Corp.

Along the way we came along sections whose interment dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I wish I had written down the names, especially those of the women. They are not common first names for our times, at least I have never known an “Edna May.”

As I have noted several times before, I serve families with interments at Quantico National Cemetery. There the headstones are all uniform – just as a majority of the sections at Arlington National. From any angle there is rank upon row of headstones, ordered and precise, well suited to a military graveyard. Large parts of Arlington National are the same, but large sections  are a mixture of what government-supplied headstones and private markers There is a randomness of size, order, and alignment which hearkens to an older time.

At Quantico and most of Arlington there is an sense of the egalitarian. A Private or ordinary Seaman can be buried next to a Major General or Rear Admiral. In the mix are 400 Medal of Honor recipients.

They are all at rest.

Image credit: Creator: Elizabeth Fraser | Credit: (U.S. Army photo by Elizabeth Fraser)