Where was that? Bitberg?
In 1983, President Reagan attended a Williamsburg, Va., summit and sent Deputy Secretary of Defense W. Paul Thayer to lay the ceremonial wreath at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush spent Memorial Day weekend at the Bush family's famed Kennebunkport, Maine, vacation spot, where he attended a wreath-laying ceremony at a local American Legion hall (and squeezed in a round of golf). Vice President Dan Quayle went to the Arlington ceremony.
And on Veterans Day 2007, President George W. Bush was in Texas while Vice President Dick Cheney attended a ceremony in Arlington.
"Non-Arlington veterans deserve presidential visits
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Several veterans' groups have expressed displeasure with President Obama visiting Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill. instead of Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. I take it, then, that these groups feel the 20,000 veterans buried at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, including my father, a WW II Army veteran, and my mother, a WW II Navy veteran, are less deserving of a presidential visit than those buried at Arlington. I take it that the millions of veterans buried in the other 163 national cemeteries and 97 state veterans cemeteries are also less worthy than the veterans buried at Arlington.
I suggest that to honor all the fallen, President Obama and future presidents should visit a different national cemetery each Memorial Day and give every deceased veteran the respect that up until now was paid primarily to just those buried at Arlington. |
