Adams County, Ohio
Once in a great while, Uncle Sam allows me to return to my home town, and visit all my kinfolk in Greene County and Adams County. My mother, Madge Ann Tolle/Jones, is buried in Wilmington (Clinton County), so I took time to stop at her grave site and pay my respects.
My grandparents, Grace Jane and Herman Tolle, are buried at Locust Grove Cemetery, in Adams County (between Locust Grove, where my dad Berlin went to school waaaaay back in the Jurassic Period of Ohio), and Peebles. My brother, Gary, is also buried at this cemetery.
While looking for their grave sites at Locust Grove, I happened across a relatively new grave site that really saddened me. An elaborate tombstone bearing the pictures of SSG Omer T. Hawkins from the Adams County area, and his Marine father sat between my brother's and grand parents' grave sites. SSG Hawkins had been killed in Iraq on 14 October, 2004. I had just returned from Iraq in January, where a car bomb almost took me and my fellow troopers out, in Mosul, on 11 December, 2004--less than two months after SSG Hawkins died.
When you see where these young troopers are buried, it makes you re-think the war. I trust that folks in charge take time from their hectic schedules and ponder the many lonely gravesites across America, where nearly 2,000 American troops lie. If Congressmen and women and other high-ranking politicians had to bury their own children, they would be less enthusiastic about ordering Americans off to distant battlefields.
My grandparents, Grace Jane and Herman Tolle, are buried at Locust Grove Cemetery, in Adams County (between Locust Grove, where my dad Berlin went to school waaaaay back in the Jurassic Period of Ohio), and Peebles. My brother, Gary, is also buried at this cemetery.
While looking for their grave sites at Locust Grove, I happened across a relatively new grave site that really saddened me. An elaborate tombstone bearing the pictures of SSG Omer T. Hawkins from the Adams County area, and his Marine father sat between my brother's and grand parents' grave sites. SSG Hawkins had been killed in Iraq on 14 October, 2004. I had just returned from Iraq in January, where a car bomb almost took me and my fellow troopers out, in Mosul, on 11 December, 2004--less than two months after SSG Hawkins died.
When you see where these young troopers are buried, it makes you re-think the war. I trust that folks in charge take time from their hectic schedules and ponder the many lonely gravesites across America, where nearly 2,000 American troops lie. If Congressmen and women and other high-ranking politicians had to bury their own children, they would be less enthusiastic about ordering Americans off to distant battlefields.
posted by Glenn Tolle | 8:18 AM
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