Honoring forgotten soldiers

Memorial Day is for recognizing the lives of soldiers who have died.

For members Rutherford Cemetery Association, giving that recognition has been a call of duty - members have spent the past several years tracking down information on more than a dozen unrecognized veterans in the graveyard.

Early Monday morning the local VFW will celebrate the lives and sacrifices of the veterans buried at Rutherford Cemetery, which includes Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans.

"This is probably the first year that we have had the list complete as it is," said Ronald Johnson, president of the Rutherford Cemetery Association. "It's kind of been an ongoing thing."

Iona Holsten and others noticed that the cemetery wasn't paying tribute to all its veterans, because they were unaware that some buried on the hillside graveyard had fought for the U.S.

"Iona took the bull by the horns a few years ago and started the whole process as far as getting the veterans honored," Johnson said.

Holsten began sending out notices in the cemetery newsletter asking for people with any information on the veterans buried there to come forward.

She said the cemetery association assumed the VFW kept track of all the veterans, but no complete list existed. She then contacted officials with Washington County's Veterans Affairs Office, but they kept track of only living veterans.

"I just kind of hit a dead end," Holsten said. "So I just started slowly looking. Some are already marked, but a lot of them were not. It was by newsletters and everything that we've been trying to get people to identify their veterans and where they served."

Today, that list includes six Civil War dead, two from the Spanish American War, three veterans of World War I and 16 from World War II. There are veterans of the Korean War and Vietnam, as well.

The cemetery is one of the oldest in the county. It was formed in 1850 and had its first interment in 1851.

The Civil War-era gravestones are in limestone. Graves such as Watson W. Hall, who fought for the Company E of the 113 Illinois Infantry, have been recognized with flags and markers.

In the cemetery Thursday evening, Holsten put up flags next to gravestones that had, until recently, gone without much notice.

Monday morning, those names will be recognized. The event is slated to start at 7 a.m., Johnson said.

"The flags have been increasing every year, so it gets more impressive as it goes along," Johnson said. "We're just trying to give credit where credit is due."

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