After 67 years, a young man’s family members have all passed on, and even distant relatives seem to have disappeared. But Edward O’Toole is finally being buried near his former home in the San Francisco Bay Area, decades after he died in the German warfields of WWII.
I found that news story touching, and was heartened to read that a stranger took the time to research O’Toole’s roots and attend the burial. At one point, the young soldier had a family. They loved him and missed him, and they erected a memorial in his honor. They are all gone now, which means it’s up to the rest of us to remember those who died for our freedom. I’ve whole-heartedly believed this since childhood, when I regularly browsed the WWII section of my local library and read about the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Such horrors should never happen, but history has a habit of fading until we’ve all forgotten.
We are nudged to remember on Memorial and Veterans days, and I imagine that there will be a number of U.S. ceremonies this December, marking the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But we don’t have to remember on those days only — sometimes a soldier’s remains come home from a far-off country and are buried on a regular weekday while the rest of us go on with our regular lives. That’s how we should live, but we should also remember.
