1. Pearl Harbor Still a Day for the Ages, but a Memory Almost Gone
2. HONOLULU For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every Dec. 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies, sharing memories of a day they still remember in searing detail.
3. But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors association.
4. With a concession to the reality of time of age, of deteriorating health and death the association will disband on Dec. 31.
5. We had no choice, said William H. Eckel, 89, who was once the director of the Fourth Division of the survivors association, interviewed by telephone from Texas. Wives and family members have been trying to keep it operating, but they just cant do it. People are winding up in nursing homes and intensive care places.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/us/fewer-veterans-to-remember-pearl-harbor-day.html?pagewanted=all
Shakespeare said it best, in Sonnet 65:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
2. HONOLULU For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every Dec. 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies, sharing memories of a day they still remember in searing detail.
3. But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors association.
4. With a concession to the reality of time of age, of deteriorating health and death the association will disband on Dec. 31.
5. We had no choice, said William H. Eckel, 89, who was once the director of the Fourth Division of the survivors association, interviewed by telephone from Texas. Wives and family members have been trying to keep it operating, but they just cant do it. People are winding up in nursing homes and intensive care places.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/us/fewer-veterans-to-remember-pearl-harbor-day.html?pagewanted=all
Shakespeare said it best, in Sonnet 65:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?