A second blog in the Beltway Trip
series is all about history.
While in the Maryland, D.C., and
Pennsylvania areas recently, I had the privilege of marking off
several items from my “bucket list.”
Saw the White House, on a day when a
madman with a shotgun went on a killing spree at the Naval Yard just
a mile and a half away.
My first inkling of this horrific event
was seeing snipers appearing on roofs around the White House (and
atop the presidential residence), plainclothes Secret Service agents
in LaFayette Square checking black nylon bags for their automatic
weapons, a flood a uniformed Secret Service and metro cops suddenly
appearing, and steel barrier pillars rising out of Pennsylvania
Avenue to block vehicular traffic.
Otherwise, people continued on with
their daily routines. We followed a large delegation from the
People's Republic of China for a while as we trekked the National
Mall, seeing the Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and other monuments;
the Vietnam Memorial; the Reflecting Pool, etc., joining them in
snapping photos.
Another day, we drove to Gettysburg,
Pa., to see where ancestors on both sides of my family tree fought
the decisive battle of the Civil War. As I stood at Little Round Top,
and later the scene of Pickett's Charge, I mused about what it must
have been like for those Mimses from Virginia and Georgia who
struggled up the crags and slopes into a wall of musket balls and
cannon grapeshot.
I realized, as I walked, that one of my
ancestors may have trod the same ground, albeit under far less
serene, peaceful circumstances.
Now, it is sacred ground; then, it was
hell unleashed on earth, the soil soaked red with blood and strewn
with broken bodies.
Later, I stood at the earthworks of
Fort McHenry, where a small garrison withstood the might of the
British Fleet to save Baltimore, after the redcoats had torched
Washington, D.C. I had a new appreciation for the “Star Spangled
Banner,” and the emotion and pride Francis Scott Key must have felt
in writing those words while watching from the deck of a truce ship.
I, too, had pride then, as I watched
the flag flying at the fort.
I also had sadness, wondering what all
that blood, sacrifice and pain we have memorialized had bought, and
how our nation today squanders it,, allowing fear, selfishness and
materialism to fray the liberties and moral character so hard-earned.
