Keep Memorial Day for the Fallen

Celebrating all veterans on that day shouldn't be the point

My mother-in-law, Peggy (whom I always just called “Mom”), for much of her adult life had a picture in her bedroom of a gap-toothed, dimple-cheeked young man wearing the jaunty head cover of a Marine: her cousin, Private First Class Thomas E. Tehan. In the photo he is as handsome as a movie star.

She called him Tommy.

He was born in 1926 and was exactly the same age as she. I imagine that Tommy was much like a brother to her, as she was an only child.

Decades ago she told me about him, briefly, while in the kitchen of her Tonawanda, N.Y., home preparing one of her wonderful dinners, feeding a full house as usual. (We all miss those dinners.)

Tommy, she said, was in the South Pacific when a Japanese kamikaze hit his ship, killing him instantly. Kamikazes were suicide planes, and terrifiying; they were steered by pilots who sacrificed their own lives in an attempt to sink ships.

Mom didn’t dwell on it, but I could tell that the loss of her cousin still hurt.

She didn’t have much more information than that. It is easier to find information now, of course. A few clicks of the computer mouse revealed that the ship on which her cousin died was an aircraft carrier, the USS Saratoga. It was hit by five Japanese bombs in three minutes and then struck by not one, but three kamikazes Feb. 21,1945. The ship was supporting the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima that had begun just two days before.

The tough ship didn’t sink, but had to head home to the United States for repairs. Mom’s cousin never made it back, though. An online digital collection at East Carolina University shows horrifying photos of the attack and its aftermath, along with a moving picture of hundreds of men assembled for the funeral service for the 123 men who died. It was Tommy’s funeral service. At 18, he wasn’t even old enough to vote.

I think there was a piece of my mother-in-law’s heart that always mourned him.

I mention this because we have just celebrated Memorial Day here in the United States.

Memorial Day was once called Decoration Day due to the practice of decorating graves of the fallen with flowers. Memorial Day for decades used to be the day to exclusively remember the sacrifice of those who died in war.

Now, somehow, it has become a decidedly different day — to celebrate all veterans.

Hey, I love veterans. My favorite two are my sister Claudia and my brother Tim. Between them they served in the Army, Marine Corps and Navy. Not bad for one family. And my mother was an upstanding member of the Women’s Army Corps in World War II. Until the day she died she was justifiably proud of the two years she spent as a WAC.

All three did a noble thing in joining. That’s why we have Veteran’s Day in November – to honor people’s sense of duty in doing what they didn’t want to do and going where they necessarily did not want to go in order to serve in the military. It’s a sacrifice, no doubt about it.

Of course, it pales in comparison to the sacrifice of PFC Tommy Tehan. He is listed on a monument in Honolulu, Hawaii, as having been buried at sea. Remembering him and those like him was why we had Memorial Day, I always thought.

But it isn’t like that anymore.

The National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C., televised Monday, was a case study in the melding of remembering those who died, celebrating veterans and recruiting people to join the military. The music stopped occasionally for “Why I Serve” videos so soldiers could recite why they were motivated to join the Armed Forces.

The concert felt like one, long recruiting infomercial, a bald sales pitch for enlistment in the military. After a time, I just couldn’t watch anymore.

This isn’t what Memorial Day is supposed to be. Celebrating all veterans, no matter what their jobs or risks they took, dilutes the day’s meaning. It makes remembrance of those whose lives were cut short in battle secondary.

Tommy may have been buried at sea, but he has a memorial headstone in a cemetery outside of Buffalo, in Cheektowaga, N.Y. My mother-in-law died too young, at 69, 30 years ago, but she has children and grandchildren who remember her and miss her. And although her beloved cousin died so long ago, with no children, he isn’t forgotten.

After the war, vets founded American Legion Post 1449 in Buffalo and named it the Thomas E. Tehan American Legion Post. It remains so today. Tommy’s face still smiles from photos, still heartbreakingly handsome and forever young.