Her husband never boasts about tending these graves, Mrs. Ford says. He simply does it.
He parks his car in the back, this old man, and heads off alone into the cemetery.
Across the gravel drive, down the hill and under the branches of the white oak trees, he winds his way through row after row of modern markers. He passes the graves decorated with concrete angels, and walks by the headstones etched with sayings about heaven and tears.
The wind carries only one sound through the desolate countryside, and it is a faint one: the tinkling of a miniature wind chime suspended from a shepherd’s hook over a baby’s grave.
Finally, 84-year-old Lloyd Ford reaches his destination. He bends down toward a brass flag holder and plucks an Old Glory so faded you can barely tell the red from the white. He tucks the tattered flag against his side, holding it between his body and his stump — all that a 75 mm weapon left of his arm when it recoiled during weapons testing in World War II. He drops in a new flag, this one crisp and colorful.
The tombstone, though worn and faded, looks as if it reads John Slisher, 324th Field Artillery, 83rd Division. He fought in the Civil War and died in 1932.
Ford, a slightly bent man with one good arm, one rebuilt shoulder, two metal knees and a warped sense of humor, learns all he needs to know about Slisher from the brass flag holder that reads GAR (Grand Army of the Republic).
Slisher was a veteran. And as such, he deserves Ford’s respect.
The least he can do, Ford figures, is to give him a new flag each Memorial Day. He’s been doing so for at least a dozen years.