Remembering on Memorial Day

Flanders Field

 

Memorial Day started after the American Civil War. It was created to remember and mourn the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. There have been many wars since that "Civil" War, or as I say when performing as local woman, Liberetta Lerich Green,

although that program mainly is about the Lerich family Underground Railroad Station.

Yet another  historical person I portray is Michigan "Hello Girl", Oleda Joure Christides. These bilingual switchboard operators were sworn into the army for World War I, but it took them 60 years to finally receive Veteran Status, including honorable discharges. In December 2024 the group finally was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

While the Army in World War I bragged about its vaccination program, Hello Girl, Cora H. Bartlett, died of Typhoid and was initially buried in Tours, France, where she died. The people there gave her a funeral cortege with a floral blanket over her casket, which was rolled to their cemetery in June of 1919. Her casket was later removed in 1922 and sent to be re-buried at her family plot in the Hillsdale, Michigan cemetery of King Lake Cemetery. 

The Hillsdale County Historical Society has a page memorializing Cora. 

It also has a general page about the Hello Girls as well as about her fellow Hillsdale operator who was yet another Hello Girl, Norma Finch Carman. She survived the war and later married a Captain, Joel Carman, after they both saw action coming home from "Over There." That was the song Enrico Caruso sang to support all from the United States who accepted service in Europe.  

World War I was supposedly the "War to End All Wars." Of course it wasn't, but on this Memorial Day we should remember both those who died in their service or survived.