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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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I was at Arlington National Cemetery Sunday morning when it opened so I could photograph the grave markers of the parents of a friend of mine from San Diego. She was able to come back for her dad's funeral in March but can't swing another trip to visit their grave. While I was there I wandered around and found the memorial that marks the graves of sailors and Marines who went down on the United States Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898.
The ship exploded and all hands, 229 of them, were lost. Seventeen years later their bodies were repatriated and buried in section 24 of Arlington, near the mast of the Maine. Their names are engraved on the foundation of the memorial.

A sad story in and of itself, but the most poignant part is when you walk among the tombstones and see this. Our Resolved exhibit shows how far we've come and made this kind of memorial obsolete.

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