Like so many of the local rites of spring that
have been denied us in the monsoon weekends
from March through June, a walk beneath
the blossom-time brightness of the Grove
Street Cemetery has eluded most of us this
year.
But the time-softened, celebratory spirit of the place persists.
And next week, as the Fourth of July comes up on
Friday's calendar, the simple pleasures of one
of the best Independence Day observances in the
nation will perhaps be there for us to share without
rain. Set your holiday alarm clock, now, for a
9 a.m. start in the rare cemetery that is a National
Historic Landmark.
If you're in a "been there, done that" slump, you
know that these are memorial moments worth some
regular reprise - from the modest village-style
parade to the fife music of the Second Company
Governor's Foot Guard, and the brief tributes,
in dappled shade, at the graves of our Declaration-signer
Roger Sherman and of Gen. David B. Humphreys, who
was George Washington's valued aide-de-camp.
The occasion has been sponsored for the past 53
years by the Connecticut Sons of the American Revolution,
Gen. David B. Humphreys Branch No. 1, and other
patriotic societies.
It was conceived by two now-deceased Register news
staffers, writer William Prendergast and Managing
Editor Roger Connolly, a Governor's Foot Guard
officer, as a way to mark Independence Day after
World War II's cataclysmic events.
There are sometimes child participants, including
Boy Scouts who individually present the flags of
the 13 original Colonies that became the states
of a new republic.
On Friday in the New Haven Burial Ground where
some soldier-survivors of the Revolution are buried,
Marshall Robinson of the Sons of the American Revolution
will briefly discuss the remarkable life of Roger
Sherman, the only American who signed the four
formative documents of the republic. He became
New Haven's first mayor in 1784.
Robert Novack of the Derby Historical Society will
review the public career of David Humphreys, who
became an agricultural pioneer after the fighting
ended, imported merino sheep from Spain and provided
fine wool cloth for the inaugural coat of President
James Madison.
The ancient foot guard, represented here by officers
and its field music unit, is a reminder that in
April 1775 - 15 months before there was a Declaration
of Independence or a Revolutionary War - New Haven's
local militia, armed at the town's powder house,
marched north to join the Minute Men at Lexington
and Concord in Massachusetts. Remarkable memories.
Robert J. Leeney is editor emeritus of the Register, 40 Sargent
Drive, New Haven 06511.
Reprinted with permission.
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