Memorial Day trip stirs memories

Flags of the United States of America waved in a light breeze from rows of poles that stretched from the Kennebec cemetery entrance down a gentle slope toward a creek bottom.

It was mid-morning on Memorial Day. A color guard marched crisply across the cemetery to halt before a huge wreath. The grass of the cemetery and of the land that reached beyond it toward Interstate 90 was the color of emeralds, so rich under a partly cloudy sky that it hurt the eyes, and I squinted across the prairie. Even in Lyman County, three or four inches of rain in May will keep things green.

The ceremony at the cemetery completed the Memorial Day service at Kennebec. As Legion Post Commander Kent Hamiel ordered the rifle team to prepare to fire a volley, a young, blonde-haired girl leaning against the white fence of the cemetery stepped back toward the gravel road and put her hands over her ears. The three volleys of rifle fire tore through the silence of the morning, and the pure notes of “Taps” tore at the emotions of those who had assembled to remember men and women lost in service to their country.

I watched the ceremony because I’d been asked to speak at the Memorial Day programs in Kennebec and Reliance. The formal program at Kennebec was over, and after the few moments at the cemetery just northeast of town, I was headed for the old Reliance gymnasium for the program there.

At Reliance, I knew I would be sure to see several of my McManus relatives. My mother is a McManus. She’s buried in the cemetery north of Reliance next to my dad, Henry Woster. Their grave site isn’t far from where my grandma and grandpa on both sides of the family are buried, and the cemetery is filled with other relatives, family friends and names I knew as I grew up in that part of South Dakota.

I hadn’t been as sure how many people I would know in Kennebec. I thought about that as I drove down Highway 83 from Pierre last Monday morning. The community is what, 10 or 11 miles from Reliance? When I was a kid, it seemed a lot farther than that. For a farm kid, traveling the eight miles to Reliance was an adventure. Passing the town and turning right to rattle along old Highway 16 to Kennebec was a real trip, and we seldom went there except to visit the courthouse for tax reasons or to bounty a badger or two.

As it turned out, I knew several of the folks who filed into the school gymnasium in Kennebec. Some of them had to remind me who they were. Others, after a moment of studying faces and searching old memory files, I could turn from the fresh-faced boy or girl in my memory to the aging and sometimes wrinkled man or woman who stood before me.

Just before I filed into the gym myself, a car pulled up next to the entrance and former Sen. Jim Abdnor stepped out. It took no searching of memory files to recognize that old gentleman. I’ve known him in my reporting life since 1969, and I knew who he was even when I was a boy. His presence gave me a couple of ideas for my address, since I’d already planned to talk a bit about another Kennebec kid, Pat McKeever.

Pat and I were friends for at least three decades before his death just over a year ago. Before we really knew each other, though, I reported on his unsuccessful run for 2nd District Congress in 1972. His opponent that campaign? Jim Abdnor. Imagine that. Each major political party was represented by candidates from the same, small prairie town.

Abdnor won and went on to become a U.S. senator. Pat lost but went on to serve with distinction as a circuit court judge. I always called them “Senator” and “Judge,” but in my mind, then as now, I thought of them as Jim and Pat.

I thought of each of them, and of many other old friends and home-county acquaintances, as I drove home on Memorial Day.

Tags: terry woster, memorial day, opinion, news, kennebec