Tag Archives: Dayton

My Town Monday: One of Dayton’s Happenin’ Places

by Jennette,

Note from Jennette: I am deep in the weeds of NaNoWriMo, so I’m offering up a rerun. I have a lot of followers now who weren’t following me when this was originally published, so I’m hoping a lot of new readers will find this. It’s also timely – the facilities upgrade initiative mentioned in the blog post is on the Library Levy on the ballot in tomorrow’s general election. So if you live in the area and haven’t already voted, please go – and consider voting YES for the library! Not sure why? Read on!

The Dayton area has always been fortunate to have a fantastic library. For two centuries, the library has been a vital part of our community.

The very first officially-recognized public library in Ohio, Dayton’s first library was started in 1805, in the home of Benjamin Van Cleve. Back then, it was a pay service. The library moved several times and was even closed and all its books sold, on at least two occasion.

Photo of The old Dayton libraryThe precursor to today’s Dayton Metro Library was built on the current library’s property in 1888. This building was also home to a museum, which included natural history and Native American artifacts. The museum later became the Dayton Museum of Natural History, and eventually was renamed the Booneshoft Museum of Discovery. The museum was moved into its own location in 1955, and the library continued to serve as such until it was demolished, and the current building built, in 1961.

Today the libaray continues to be a happening place, with 20 branches located throughout Montgomery County. It’s unusual to drive past the two branches near me and not see the parking lots nearly full. In addition to traditional books and periodicals, the library began carrying music on tape in the seventies, which eventually expanded to VHS videos and audiobooks on tape, then Music CDs, DVDs, and audiobooks on CDs.  Dowloadable ebooks and audiobooks were added via Overdrive in the early 2000s – more on that in a future blog post. Programs for kids, teens and adults – on book-related subjects and otherwise – are popular.

Dayton Metro Library The library is once more outgrowing its downtown location, and has proposed an ambitious expansion plan in an effort to stay relevant and serve the community. Changes in technology – especially in book publishing – are creating a shift in how consumers patronize the library, and the usage of services has shifted to a lot more computer use, more online checkouts of e- and audiobooks, and more demand for meeting space, as opposed to shelf space for paper books. Studies have focused on cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana, where a new, expanded library has played a key role in revitalizing a stagnant downtown.

But the best part of the library remains the same – whatever book or written material you’re looking for, the library probably has it – and if they don’t, they have partnerships with a public libraries all over Ohio, and chances are, you’ll find it there. As has been the case for as long as I can remember, there’s no charge to have a book you’re looking for, transferred to your local branch if they don’t have a copy there. Loans for (and transfer of) materials from participating Ohio libraries are also free.

I got my first library card around age 6 or 7. Having lived in the area all my life, I’ve often taken the library for granted. But I’ve had friends who’ve moved out of the area to larger cities, who tell me their libraries don’t have near the selection Dayton’s library has.

What about you? Does your hometown have a great library? Do you use its service, or are you even aware of all your library offers?  (I admit that if I were to try to list them, I’d probably miss a few.)

Historic photo via Dayton Metro Library www.daytonmetrolibrary.org | 1960’s photo – unknown

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

My Town Monday: I was Born in a Haunted Hospital

by Jennette,

It’s true! And I never knew until yesterday, when looking for an appropriately-spooky topic to blog about. Who knows, maybe that explains my weirdness.

The hospital in question is the medical complex now called Elizabeth Place, which houses numerous doctors’ offices and has a couple dozen inpatient rooms. It opened in its current-day incarnation as a physician-owned medical center in 2006, after the facility had lain empty for six years.

Before that, it was known as the Franciscan Medical Center, having been re-named from its former appellation, and the one most people still know it by: St. Elizabeth Hospital. And St. Elizabeth had been around a long time – it was originally opened by the Franciscan Sisters in 1878. So it has had a lot of time to collect spiritual remnants. As a charitable organization, the Franciscan Sisters’ policy was to never turn anyone away, regardless of ability to pay, so many indigent and homeless Daytonians were treated there. Big surprise – lack of funding was the main reason the hospital was forced to close in 2000. At the time of its closing, the 321-bed hospital complex included seven buildings.

It was then that the stories of hauntings started coming to light.

Many of these are the typical phenomena: cold spots – including ones where people thought the cold spot was “following” them, sensations of being watched when no one was there (but there were tons of cameras in the place 🙂 ), seeing a shadowy person reflected behind one when approaching a mirrored glass wall – and the person reporting the visual was alone.

Many people have reported elevators stopping and opening their doors on floors where no one had pushed the call button. Security guards who worked the facility while it was vacant claim to have seen an empty wheelchair in the lobby, spinning in circles. Other people have reported hearing “voices,” when they were alone. (Judging from the stories, I don’t think these people were writers. We hear voices regularly. 😀 )

While the buildings were vacant, they still had minimal power – just enough that the security guards could see to make their rounds. One guard reported walking through what had housed the inpatient adult psychiatric ward. One of her companions remarked that he wished it were better lit, and every single light in the area – including those that were supposedly disconnected – came on! Other weird happenings during the time the facility was unoccupied include a bright flash of light in an upper floor room, that was captured by a security camera mounted on the exterior of the Dayton Heart Hospital next door. Security guards rushed to the room, fearing an electrical short that could start a fire. They found nothing amiss, and nothing that could have caused the bright burst of light.

The weirdest thing about that story? The room where the burst of light had appeared was one where a resident nun had committed suicide many years before.

But the phenomenon I read the most accounts of was the “perfume spot” (photo here). This looks like the corner of a large treatment room, or perhaps a hallway. Whatever it is, many people have reported smelling a strong rose-scented perfume. This happened before the hospital was closed, too. One theory is that the perfume-wearer is the ghost of a pharmacy worker, whose boyfriend murdered her when she refused to get drugs for him.

It’s been many years since my mother was in St. Elizabeth’s hospital. My brother is five years younger than me, and by the time he came along, my family had moved to the suburbs, so he was born in a newer, suburban hospital. I asked my mom if she recalled anything spooky or weird during her stay at St. Elizabeth in the sixties. She didn’t – but then, that doesn’t surprise me, considering that she gave birth to me there, and I’m the most unintuitive person I know. In researching, I also did not run across any mentions of possible paranormal activity occurring after the facility was reopened as Elizabeth Place.

More info, including photos and a tour of the hospital while it was vacant, can be found on the Forgotten Ohio website.

What do you think? Could being born in a haunted hospital influence a would-be writer? Do you know of a haunted hospital, or have one in your hometown? I’d love to hear from you!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

 

My Town Monday: Dayton’s Haunted Courthouse

by Jennette,

One of the coolest and most interesting buildings in Dayton is the Old Courthouse, located in the city’s center, at the corner of Third and Main Streets. The Greek-revival style building was completed in 1850, and remains one of the area’s architectural and historic treasures.

Photo via Wikipedia Commons

It’s also haunted.

People have claimed to hear footsteps going upstairs to the judges’ chambers, and others have reported hearing moans.

The courthouse was started in 1844, and was built on the site the jail occupied for forty years before that. The jail was also where murderers were hung. Dayton’s first convicted murderer was John McAfee, who was having an affair, and murdered his wife. He was hung for this in 1824, and many people speculate that his ghost is one of those that haunt the courthouse. But even among people who might be inclined to go along with this story, there’s debate, for historical record indicates that the jail wasn’t yet used for hangings at that time. They were instead public events, until Ohio passed a law banning this. By then, a new jail had been built beside the courthouse on Third Street.

Other murderers were hung in the jail beside the courthouse throughout the 1860s and 1870s, and it’s possible that one or more of their ghosts haunt the courthouse. A likely possibility is James Murphy, who was only 19 when convicted. His was a botched execution; at first, the rope broke. After it was replaced, it was too short, and the opening of the trapdoor in the platform beneath it didn’t cause the expected, quick snap. Instead, Murphy hung for seventeen minutes before he finally died.

Perhaps the ghost is that of Harry Adams, the last man to hang at the jail on Third Street, and who swore innocence until his death, claiming that his girlfriend was the murderer.

Of course, my skepticism meter registers pretty high for all of this, but maybe that’s just me. I’ve been inside the courthouse, and never heard any weird noises or felt any cold drafts, but then I’m probably the least intuitive person I know. But the stories are kind of fun either way. Here’s an article on Examiner.com with some more details.

Another fun fact: the plaza beside the courthouse is where my recently-released short story “Time’s Holiday” begins.

Hauntings or no, the Courthouse is a beautiful building. Here’s a video that goes over all its cool history and gives a tour inside.

What do you think? Is Dayton’s old courthouse haunted? Do you have a similar place in your hometown, and do you go along with the stories, or are you skeptical like me? I’d love to hear from you!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

Look! Christmas can be Murder

by Jennette,

How? you might ask. Well, if you’re Taylor Gressman, and you inadvertently go back in time a couple decades, you might find yourself in the midst of the Christmas Killings, the worst killing spree in Dayton’s history. The killers, four of whom were caught and convicted, murdered six people between December 23 and 26 in 1992 for little more than a few bucks, a pair of shoes, and a jacket.

No one’s ever accused me of being too nice to my characters.

This is the premise of my upcoming short story, “Time’s Holiday,” and urban fantasy author Debra Kristi gave me the perfect opportunity to introduce it by tagging me in the LOOK! meme (Thanks, Debra!).

The rules are pretty simple. Just do a search for the word “look” in your work-in-progress, and paste it in with the surrounding paragraph or two. Then, of course, you get to tag others. First, a little bit of “Time’s Holiday:”

She opened her eyes to find a blond girl about her age staring at her from across the small… bedroom, she guessed, although there wasn’t any furniture. The worn carpet beneath her head was an indeterminate grayish-brown, and riddled with what looked like cigarette burns. The drywall above the blond girl’s shoulder was cracked, and someone had punched a hole through it just above her head. “Where…” Taylor began. She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Where am I?”

The girl half-shrugged. “Bill’s place.”

Taylor tried to shake off the lethargy. “Where’s… that?”

The girl cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t remember coming here? Man, you must’ve gotten some strong stuff.”

Taylor struggled to brace a hand on the floor. Had she been drugged? Finally, she pushed herself up. As she caught her breath, she looked down.

She still wore her black peacoat, her frilly black skirt billowing from beneath it. Her granny boots remained laced on her feet. A tiny, red hair clip shaped like a buttefly lay beside her. She lifted her hand to her head–ugh, why was it so hard?–and patted her hair. One of her ponytails had come out. And she realized that the girl across the room wasn’t blurry, so she still had her glasses on. “I…” Taylor stared at her hands. “No, I don’t remember.” The last thing she remembered was going to Courthouse Square to look for her angel, then some bum handing her a flyer…

Thanks again, Debra, for the tag!

image from Microsft Clip Art (office.microsoft.com)And now I get to tag people. I’ll just do a few, since I’d love to get a taste of what these authors are working on:

If you don’t have time or something ready to share, no worries!

My goal with “Time’s Holiday”  is to give those who’ve already read the Saturn Society books a fun glimpse into a minor character’s backstory, while piquing the interest of those who haven’t read the books.

On another note, when I did my search, the word “look” or a variation of it appeared24 times in 23 pages. Too much? What do you think? Do you like holiday stories? Is this too gruesome a topic for one (there’s no on-the-page violence)? While it isn’t the swee goodness and light that many holiday stories are full of, it does have its moments of Christmas cheer and goodwill.

My Town Monday: The Road, Nature, and History

by Jennette,

Last Thursday, I blogged about courting burnout, and some things I did in an effort to alleviate it.

One of those things was to take time out to play. I’d only ridden my Harley twice all summer, which my husband had been giving me shit about. Part of the reason is because it’s just been too darn hot for much of the summer – riding in that is like pointing a blow dryer into your face. In other words, not much fun. But even when I had decent weather, it seemed I always had too much to do.

So I decided to blow it all off and ride. This is what my husband does to blow off stress – just hop on the bike and see where the road takes you.

The road took me up north of Dayton, to Huber Heights, and to Carriage Hill and Metropark. The park is a goodly swath of green land and undeveloped, uncultivated, natural prairie; hiking and horse trails; and picnic areas. It’s also home to Carriage Hill Farm, a historically-accurate, operating 1880s-era farm.

I remember going there on field trips more than once during my elementary school days. Mostly what I remember about it was the farm animals — sheep, horses, cattle, pigs, and chickens. It was a great experience for any suburban or city schoolkid. There were a lot of things there now that weren’t when I was in school – the surrounding park, for one, and also the restored windmill, and a separate museum building and store. I’m pretty sure they also didn’t have the functional steam-thresher, which people were demoing that day and was pretty cool!

I took my time just wandering around the place. Although I have to confess: I took a few pictures, so it wasn’t 100% not-work. But it was fun and relaxing, and that’s what counts. Also, I got to enjoy three of my favorite things: the road, nature, and history!

Does your hometown have anything like this, where city and suburban folks can learn about history and farm life? Have you done anything to just get away and have fun lately?

 

Click any of the photos below to see a slideshow.

My Town Monday: De-stressing in a Place with History

by Jennette,

Two or three weeks ago, I scheduled an appointment at a spa. My daughter and husband had given me a gift certificate for Mothers’ Day, and this was the first chance I’d had to use it. I had to schedule the appointment three weeks out – not because that was the soonest they could fit me in, but because that was the soonest I could fit it in.

I went to the Square One Salon in downtown Dayton. I didn’t know it at the time, but this place has won national awards and has been featured on MSNBC.com.

It’s also in a historic district, which of course is a plus for me. The building is called The Cannery, and is part of the Webster Station Historic District. The spa’s neighbors include a British-themed tea room, a children’s art gallery and education center, and loft apartments in the upper floors. The building also used to house The Cannery Art and Design Gallery, but it moved recently.

The building was originally built as part of an industrial complex in the mid-1800s by Eugene Barney, one of Dayton’s captains of industry in the streetcar manufacturing business. The neighborhood was powered by DC electric – a major innovation at the time! Over the years, many food distributors and grocers occupied the building, hence its name.

While I waited for my appointment, I found a local interest book called Metropolitan Dayton. It was clear after thumbing through a few pages that the book–a contemporary guide to local business and industry–wasn’t new, as many of the businesses profiled in its pages had either left the area, undergone mergers, or had gone out of business. Other organizations, like the Air Force Institute of Technology and Wright State University, are much larger now. I finally found the copyright date in the back: 1993.

So I got in a little history, and the facial and massage were great! If you saw my last couple of posts, you can see where this was much-needed. Unfortunately, it didn’t reduce the length of my to-do list any, but it did have the expected de-stressing effect.

Have you been stressed lately? What do you do to de-stress?

My Town Monday: Publishing Success Against the Odds

by Jennette,

On Memorial Day weekend, my daughter wanted to do something “museum-ish,” so we went to one I hadn’t visited yet, but had been wanting to: the Paul Lawrence Dunbar House.

The Paul Laurence Dunbar House
Photo via nps.gov

I knew about this turn-of-the-20th-century author through my interest in local history, and also because he’s featured in the Aviation Heritage National Park, which I’ve visited a few times. It might seem odd that a writer would be featured as part of that site, until one learns who some of his first publishers were: Orville and Wilbur Wright, in their pre-flight days as printers of his newspaper, The Dayton Tattler.

The paper folded after just a few issues, but that didn’t deter Dunbar. The challenges he faced – and overcame – make him an inspiration for any writer.

  • Like many writers, he wasn’t exactly flush with cash.
  • He got paid for some of his early efforts, but not enough to live on, so he had to work a day job.
  • He self-published his first book, a collection of poetry titled Oak and Ivy.
  • Back then, there was no print-on-demand, and self-publishing was an expensive proposition, requiring a large print run with a comparable outlay of cash.

But the challenge that really set Dunbar apart was the fact that he was black. The son of former slaves, Dunbar had to contend with racial prejudice. Despite the fact that he had a high school diploma in an era where the majority of men did not, his color relegated him to menial jobs. His first job after graduating from high school was as an elevator operator.

English: Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 –...

Paul Laurence Dunbar, circa 1890. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But even then, Dunbar made the best of his situation. He hand-sold Oak and Ivy, including many copies to his elevator passengers. The need for authors to self-promote is nothing new, and Dunbar was skilled in this area: he recouped his investment in two weeks. Part of his work’s popularity came from its two distinct styles: some of his poems were written in standard English, while others were written in colloquial black dialect.

Today, self-publishing success is one way to attract an agent or editor’s attention, and this too is nothing new. Fellow writers James Whitcomb Riley and William Dean Howells noticed Dunbar’s work and helped publicize it. As is common today, networking with other writers was a crucial part of Dunbar’s success. He also frequently gave public readings to garner interest in his work.

In 1897, Dunbar finally got a job befitting a man of his talents: librarian at the Library of Congress. He sold several works to publishers, and eventually made enough money from his writing to build a nice house in Dayton for his mother, who he’d always been close to. This is the home that later became the museum, not long after his mother’s death in the 1930s.

He continued to enjoy success in his writing, and soon left the LOC to focus on that. Eventually, he amassed a body of work consisting of a dozen poetry anthologies, five novels, four short story anthologies, a play, and dozens of song lyrics. His dialect works came under critical fire for perpetuating the comical, happy-go-lucky stereotype of black Americans, while others praised them as a celebration of his racial heritage.

Dunbar died at the age of 33 from tuberculosis, which he’d fought for over five years. This was exacerbated by alcoholism, ironically caused by doctors prescribing whiskey for his TB symptoms. In light of his short career, Dunbar’s accomplishments are even more inspiring.

Were you familiar with Paul Lawrence Dunbar before? Does your home town have a literary icon?

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My Town Monday, plus Excerpt: Ohio’s Worst Natural Disaster

by Jennette,

It happened in March, 1913. The perfect confluence of weather combined over the upper Miami Valley in west-central Ohio, and dumped massive amounts of rain on the area for several days. This was on ground already saturated from melting snows, and on Tuesday, March 25, it proved too much for the levees in Dayton. The river breached the first levee around 7 AM, and within a few hours, water 12+ feet deep covered the city. Downriver, the cities of West Carrollton, Miamisburg, Franklin, Middletown, Hamilton, and Cincinnati weren’t spared, but due to the joining of five rivers on the north side of Dayton, plus the Great Miami’s S-curve there, Dayton was the worst-hit. In terms of property damage and lives lost (anywhere from just over one hundred to four-hundred something – records were sketchy), the 1913 flood remains the worst natural disaster in Ohio’s history.

Here’s an excerpt from Time’s Enemy that shows what it might have been like that day, almost 100 years ago:

Time's Enemy Cover

An inhuman shriek jolted Tony awake. His gaze darted across sloped rafters, to the end of a long room where dim light filtered through a dusty, mud-spattered window. Church bells rang amidst the roar of hard rain, and whistles were going off everywhere, but they weren’t what woke him. He clutched the quilt. Where was he?

He sat up. Then the scream came again. Outside. It started as a loud groan, then escalated to a grating, high-pitched howl that cut to his soul.

It went on and on then faded as whatever it was passed. Tony threw off his blanket and scooted to the nearby window.

A torrent of muddy water coursed through the alley below, coming halfway up the doorway of the warehouse across the street. He’d never seen so much water where it wasn’t supposed to be. “Holy Noah’s Ark!”

He stood, then regretted it when his head smacked into a rafter. With a curse, he rubbed the sore spot as his memories of the previous day fell into place. The Saturn Society. Taylor Gressman. The wanted posters and Theodore Pippin. Goodwin’s Smoke Shop in 1913.

What had he warped into? He twisted around to search the rafters, as if answers hid in their dim recesses. The only reply was the beating rain. Then it hit him. March, 1913. He’d escaped the Saturn Society only to wind up in the middle of the worst natural disaster in Ohio’s history.

The horrible shrieks started again. He crouched and peered out the window. In the raging waters, a horse struggled to swim, its reins caught on the crossbar of a streetlamp. The yellowish-brown waters came to within a couple feet of the light globes. The horse raised its head, its lips drawn back over its teeth, and let out another ear-piercing cry. Tony cringed. A wooden crate bumped the helpless animal, knocking it free, then the current carried the crate and the horse away.

The view out the other window was much the same. A barrel floated by. Small, dark shapes clung to it. Rats.

Photo used on the cover of Time’s Enemy. Courtesy of Dayton Metro Library.

Tony leaned against the window, the glass cold against his hand and forehead, and stared in morbid fascination at the water below. The rain churned its rushing surface between pieces of broken furniture, crates and unidentifiable flotsam. Bumps and clunks came from below, probably furnishings, floating around in the shop’s lower level. He moved to the window, his fingers unable to decide whether to form fists or clutch at the window jambs. His breath formed a foggy circle on the glass. Another loud crash, then a few seconds later, a piano floated by, followed by a mass of splintered lumber that had once been a building.

The water swirled and eddied around the debris, lodging it between a telephone pole and the Smoke Shop. In the pile of wood beneath his window, a broken sign read ry’s Market. They wouldn’t be doing business any time soon.

Something moved in the wreckage. A small arm sheathed in a clinging, ruffled sleeve emerged from the water, and little fingers clutched at one of the larger pieces of wood. Slipped.

Grasped again, lost purchase.

A little girl. “Oh my God.” His voice echoed in the empty reaches of the rafters. The child groped again, failed to latch on, started to slide.

He grabbed the window sash’s blackened han-dle and pulled. Stuck tight. With a grunt he leaned upward and pulled harder. “Come on, open, dammit!” The sash didn’t move.

He could barely hear a thin, plaintive wail over the rushing water. He grabbed the sash handle, yanked upward, and this time the window obeyed.

The girl’s cry reached him again. Helplessness pinned his feet to the floor. Fear he wouldn’t reach her in time mocked him. He’d have to climb out on-to that haphazard pile of wood. One misstep could plunge him into the icy, raging current. But if he didn’t go out there, that little girl would die.

He yanked off his suit jacket. Cold as he was, it would only get in the way. “Hang on!” He climbed over the sash. She tried to grab hold of a broken timber. Missed. Then slipped into the water.

“No!” Despair stung him. The same way it had the night Bethany hadn’t come home, and a state trooper rang their doorbell. Tony had known his daughter was dead before the man said a word. “Hang on!” This little girl had a chance.

Want to read more? Time’s Enemy (e-book) is on sale for only $.99 as part of the Booklovers’ Buffet through June 22, along with over 150 other books, novellas, and short stories. You can buy Time’s Enemy at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Smashwords and many other online retailers.

What do you think? I’d love to hear from you! I will be away from my computer today and won’t be able to respond to comments, but please know that I appreciate every comment, every re-tweet,  and every Facebook Share. I’ll reply and visit your blog, if you have one, when I can! Thanks for reading!

My Town Monday: A Remembrance for Memorial Day

by Jennette,
English: Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 –...

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Yesterday, my daughter and I had a mom-and-daughter afternoon and visited a local historical site neither of us had yet visited: the Paul Lawrence Dunbar State Memorial. Dunbar was a celebrated writer who was born in Dayton in 1872 (died in 1906) and is a significant literary figured not only for his work’s own sake, but because he was an African-American who wrote both in black dialect and in standard English.

Dunbar’s parents were both former slaves, and his father enlisted to serve the Union in the Civil War. Dunbar was always proud of his father’s military service, and his first poem was published when he was only sixteen! It’s particularly relevant today as we remember those who served and sacrificed their lives.

 

“Our Martyred Soldiers”
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (public domain)

Dayton National Cemetery at the Veterans Affairs grounds

In homes all green, but cold in death,
Robbed of the blessed boon of breath—
Resting in peace from field and fray,
Our martyred soldiers sleeping lay.

Beneath the dew, the rain, the snow,
They heed no more the bloody foe,
Their sleep is calm, to them alone
‘Tis giv’n to lie without a moan.

The sun may shine in all his might—
They know no day, they know no night,
But wait a still more lasting ray,
The coming of eternal day.

No longer marches break their rest,
Or passioned hate thrills through the breast,
They lie all clothed in calm repose,
All safe from shots of lurking foes.

The grave’s a sacred place where none
Of earth may touch the sleeping one;
Where silence reigns, enthroned, sedate,
An angel guarding heaven’s gate.

The wind may blow, the hail may fall,
But at the tomb is silence all;
Man finds no nobler place to pray,
Then o’er a martyr’s lifeless clay.

Sleep on, ye soldiers, men of God,
A nation’s tears bedew the sod;
‘Tis but a short, short time till ye
Shall through the shining portals flee.

And when this memory lost shall be,
We turn, oh Father, God, to thee!
Oh find in heaven some nobler thing
Then martyrs of which men can sing.

 

I’ll share some photos and more interesting facts we learned about Dunbar in future posts.

What are you doing this Memorial Day? Or, if you’re not in the U.S., does your country have a similar day of remembrance? Do you have a friend or family who served that you’d like to tell us about? Please feel free to do so in the comments!

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