Letters to the Editor 6-6-13

Oak Mound Flags
Editor: Members of the Grand Army of the Republic are all long gone, but we continue to follow their General Order #11  “The 30th day of May (Memorial Day , is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land.”
This past Memorial Day Sotoyome Post 111 of The American Legion, put out over 700 flags in Oak Mound Cemetery. This labor of love is one of our most important activities.  Each grave is visited three times.  The first we clean each grave and make sure that we know where there are.  The older parts of Oak Mound can be a challenge, we can assure the families that their loved ones are not forgotten, even on the hill.  
On the Sunday before Memorial Day we visit each grave again, this time placing a flag on the grave of each Veteran.
We return on the Tuesday after Veterans Day and recover the flags. We find more flags than we put out. These flags are at graves where there is no indication of military service on the tombstone.  
Over the years we have created detailed records of who are veterans and where the grave is located. We know that there are other veterans buried in Oak Mound.  Please let us know if we missed your loved one. You can write us at PO Box 281, Healdsburg, CA 95448.  Give us as much information as you can, including the name of the nearest veteran with a veterans tombstone.  
Thank you for sharing your loved ones with us and thank you to everyone who joined us at 10 a.m. on Memorial Day for our annual service.
Tom Grimes
Commander, Sotoyome Post 111, The American Legion
Healdsburg
Circus of sleaze
Editor: Thank you so much for your insightful “Gatsby” article in the Trib this morning. It’s terribly discouraging to see the once “Redwood Empire” turn into this circus of sleaze (those limos!). When was it determined that ripping out all the trees, native and fruiting, would be an excellent idea?  Now we wonder why the landscape suffers and the bees die off.
Weddings?
Rock bands?
Noise and and other kinds of pollution?
Such hubris and ostentation.
Barbara Medaille
Healdsburg