In the shadow of legends, ordinary lives tell a bigger truth

I take a weekly walk in Sleepy Hollow, New York, through its historic cemetery, where many captains of industry rest. William Rockefeller lies in a grand mausoleum. So do Walter Chrysler, Leona Helmsley, and Elizabeth Arden. Andrew Carnegie’s grave is marked only by a simple Celtic cross.

Washington Irving is buried there, too, in a sprawling family plot on a hill just behind the Old Dutch Church he made famous in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

In the present, our responsibility is to live with honor, blessing and serving those we know and influence today.

But among the monuments to those who built billion-dollar corporations or wrote legendary tales, you’ll also find the graves of “ordinary folks” — men and women of humble means and obscure backgrounds. Walking among these modest headstones, you begin to see the nobility in even a simple life well lived.

One headstone I saw recently brought that home — and made me think about the left’s ongoing push for “reparations.”

Repayment for injustice

On the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, I came across the grave of a man who died in 1912. That August morning in 1945, an estimated 70,000 people perished when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city — a calculated gamble to end World War II quickly.

In the years before the bombing, Japanese Americans — U.S. citizens — were herded into internment camps. Many likely had close relatives and friends who died in Hiroshima that day. In 1988, the federal government agreed to pay monetary reparations to surviving internees.

The Conversation, a website that claims to blend “academic rigor” with “journalistic flair,” offers a comparison between reparations for Japanese Americans and those sought for African Americans. One logistical distinction, the site notes, is that the injustice against the Japanese occurred over a defined period — from 1942, when internment began, to 1945, when the war ended.

The tombstone that started the gears turning in my head along that cemetery walk had an interesting dedication carved into it. A man named John C.L. Hamilton shared the gravesite with his wife, who died a few years after he did, but for his part, the inscription read:

Photo by Albin Sadar

JOHN C.L. HAMILTON
1842–1912
Soldier and Patriot
He Served His Country with Valor
and Distinction During the
Tragic Years of Our Civil War

Many other Civil War veterans reside in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and, standing prominently among them, is a fitting monument:

Photo by Albin Sadar

PATRIA CARIOR QUAM VITA.
[Country Dearer Than Life]
OUR
UNION SOLDIERS.

While Freedom’s name
is understood,
They shall delight the
wise and good;
They dared to set their
country free,
And gave her laws
equality.

Another notable person who has found her final resting place in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is Amanda Foster, who passed away at the age of 97. She used her freedom helping others through the Underground Railroad:

Photo by Albin Sadar

(By the way, if you would like to watch a short but fun 2-1/2-minute “video tour” of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, I made one about eight years ago.)

Moving on and moving up

Many men and women — black and white — pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to rid the young nation of slavery. If the United States ever pursued true reparations based on an honest review of historical records, the line of claimants who lost family and treasure — black and white — would stretch long.

Punishment for those who engaged in the slave trade or owned slaves ended long ago. The best way to close that dark chapter is not to blame or “correct” the past, but to leave those people and events where they belong — in history.

In the present, our responsibility is to live with honor, blessing and serving those we know and influence today.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at American Thinker.