Existing comment:
Arlington Cemetery; gravestones
Arlington National Cemetery was established in 1864 after Quartermaster Montgomery Meigs proposed that 200 acres of the land seized from the Robert E Lee family be turned into a cemetery to inter the increasing waves of Civil War dead. By the end of the war, 16,000 graves were on the site.
Additional wars filled the cemetery more. By 1997, there were 245,000 servicemen and their family members buried on the 612 acres.
Most of the dead are of course relatively unknown by most people. And the endless fields of their government-issued grave markers is what makes Arlington and other national cemeteries so powerful. Servicepeople can pay for their own stones if they want but these are placed in less obtrusive places so most of the acreage has a peaceful uniformity.
Having said that, Arlington has the remains of quite a few famous people including: - From the Civil War: - Abner Doubleday - Philip Kearney - Montgomery Meigs (and his son John) - William Rosecrans - Philip Sheridan - Daniel Sickles - From World War I: - John Pershing - From World War II: - Henry (Hap) Arnold - Omar Bradley - Clair Chennault - Jimmy Doolittle - William Halsey - Ira Hayes - William Leahy - George Marshall - Anthony McAuliffe (who replied "Nuts!" to the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge) - Audie Murphy - Matthew Ridgeway - Jonathan Wainwright - From other wars: - Hyman Rickover - Maxwell Taylor - From the space program: - Roger Chaffee - Virgil Grissom - James Irwin - Francis Scobee - Michael Smith - Explorers: - Matthew Henson - Robert Peary - Political figures: - William Jennings Bryan - John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State) - Oliver Wendell Holmes (Supreme Court Justice) - John Kennedy (President) - Robert Kennedy (Attorney General) - Robert Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln's son) - Thurgood Marshall (Supreme Court Justice) - John Mitchell (Attorney General) - Potter Stewart (Supreme Court Justice) - William Howard Taft (President) - Earl Warren (Supreme Court Chief Justice) - Other notables: - Grace Hopper - Pierre L'Enfant - Joe Louis (boxer) - Lee Marvin (actor) - Francis Gary Powers (U-2 pilot) - Walter Reed - Frank Reynolds (newscaster) |