Day of Rememberance - Washington, D.C.

On Monday and Tuesday, October 24 and 25, 2016, we were on our own to explore the D.C. area while William was in school and Matt and Weina worked.  We decided on Monday to visit the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, making it a day of remembrance for us.  We hadn't previously visited either site.  Both were a short Metro ride from Arlington where the Birthday Boys live, and it was easy to combine them into a single day's trip.

Our first stop was the Pentagon.  A cell phone audio tour was available, which we found very moving and informative.  It guided us around the memorial, which is shown below in a stock photo we borrowed, because tourist photography is prohibited:

The memorial is sited in the path that American Airlines Flight 77 took - just feet off the ground - just before it exploded on hitting the west wall of the Pentagon.  The memorial contains 184 benches, one for every soul that was lost in the attack on the Pentagon, including a 3-year old girl who was on the airplane.

Our words are not enough to convey the somber feelings the memorial prompted in us.  We can only urge readers to visit it for themselves.  It is well worth the trouble and helps fill in a chapter of the horrible story of September 11, 2001 that many people are not as familiar with as the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.

We returned up the Metro Line to Arlington Cemetery.  The grounds are huge, so we decided to take a tram-car tour before walking back directly to John F. Kennedy's gravesite and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  The tour was a very good overview of the cemetery, its purpose and history, and some of the notable people who are buried there.

After the tour, we started our walk of remembrance.  Of course, the first scene we encountered - most appropriately - were the thousands and thousands of simple white gravestones marking the burial places of persons who served our country in the military:

As we approached John Kennedy's gravesite, we caught a glimpse of Arlington House, also known as the Robert E. Lee Memorial, formerly the Custis-Lee Mansion.  It was once the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee who had to abandon the property when he elected to lead the Confederate Army, because the property was in the control of the Union. It overlooks the Potomac River and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. During the American Civil War, the grounds of the mansion were selected as the site of Arlington National Cemetery.  While one of the less noble reasons the grounds were chosen was in part to ensure that Lee would never again be able to return to his home, the United States has since designated the mansion as a National Memorial to Lee.

When we arrived at the Kennedy family gravesite, and the Eternal Flame flickering over the gravesite of our former President, we saw that it was positioned in front of and below Arlington House, and shared the same spectacular vista of downtown Washington, D.C., including the Lincoln and Washington Memorials:

Robert Kennedy was buried near his brother, and also is looked over by Arlington House and a flag flying at half staff:

The ceremonial changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is carried out every hour on the hour.  We arrived at the tomb in time to watch the full ceremony, including the moment that the participating guards saluted their unknown comrades who died in battle:

On Tuesday, with most of a day available to us before our flight back to Phoenix, we decided to pick one of the Smithsonian Museums to visit.   We have visited a number of the others in prior visits, but this day we chose the museum on American History.  The day was beautiful as we crossed the Washington Mall toward the museum:

Coincidentally, on the previous Monday, October 17, the Smithsonian announced a Kickstarter campaign to raised $300,000 to fund the restoration of Dorothy's ruby slippers from the 1939 movie, "The Wizard of Oz."  Created by the MGM studios prop department, the slippers were never intended to last. Since 1939, their bright ruby hue has faded, some threads attaching sequins have broken and some sequins are losing color altogether.  It was the second such campaign launched by the Smithsonian. In 2015, it exceeded its $500,000 fundraising goal to “Reboot the Suit” and conserve and display Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 space suit at the National Air and Space Museum.  The crowdfunding on the project was so popular that the museum was additionally able to conserve the space suit of Alan Shepard from the first American manned space flight in 1961.

We were excited to hear from our tour guide, that in only five days, the museum had raised the entire amount it needed for the restoration, and our first stop was to see the ruby slippers themselves:

The museum only displays a small fraction of its entire collection, and even this small fraction was much, much more than we could hope to absorb in a single visit.  We look forward to visiting perhaps this museum again, along with the National Museum of African American History and Culture when we return to D.C. this December.

Thus filled with new information and footsore, we hopped the Metro and a connecting bus back to Dulles International Airport and our flight home to Phoenix.  When we landed, we still had a 1.5 hour nighttime drive to our campground in Tucson.  Needless to say, we fell right into bed, happy to be back with our cats Baxter and Flip, who were also undoubtedly happy to see us again.