Today is Veterans Day — an often overlooked, and underappreciated, holiday.
Town officials and VFW Post 399 are hosting services this morning, in the Town Hall auditorium.
At 10:30 a.m., the Westport Community Band will perform marches and patriotic tunes.
The full program begins at 11 a.m. The time and date are significant. The armistice ending World War I — “the war to end all wars” — began at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918.
After the ceremony, all veterans and other community members are invited to VFW Post 399 for food and drinks.
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As America celebrates our veterans Peter Jennings — an 11th-generation Westporter (!), and the Green’s Farms Church historian — reminds us of one man we should remember today.
Charles August Matthias was a member of the Greens Farm’s congregation. Our town’s American Legion Post 63 is named in his honor. Well known locally, he was one of the first Westporters killed in World War I,
August Matthias
The Matthias family farm was located near the intersection of the Post Road and Turkey Hill Road.
When I walked through the Green’s Farm’s Church lower cemetery, I could not locate a gravestone for any family members — except for this large granite marker, with only the name “Matthias.”
Perhaps he was buried without a headstone in the family plot, due to family finances — although the US Government would provide a headstone if an application was submitted.
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Meanwhile, Westport poet laureate Donna Disch offers this poem — “Day of Remembrance” — written specially for today:
During the Great War, the fields of Flanders
drank more blood than rain. Tanks and trenches
mangled the farmland, its fertile soil
scorched and churned. But in the spring
after the War ended, poppy seeds
buried and dormant for decades woke
to a peaceful bolt of light and air.
Wild and unwavering, legions of them
offered themselves to the spring
and summer sun. A red rebellion
of fragile petals and willful stems.
Bearers of remembrance,
paper poppies reappear each November.
We remember “the war to end all wars,”
the wars that followed, and the wars that
rage today. We remember your valor, honor,
sacrifice and service in the literal hell of war.
We remember those who fought, who loved,
were loved and were lost. And every year
the poppies return to flood the fields —
knowing what they know.
The doughboy statue on Veterans Green (Photo/Ted Horowitz)
