Enhance your local History knowledge Visit a Cemetery

We are about to embark on the first Holiday Weekend of the summer. Memorial Day weekend hosts the first summer backyard bar-b-ques, the first cool dip in the pools and lakes, and even the first warm afternoon listening to that Red Sox game while gardening in the back yard.

But it is also the chance to remember why we get to celebrate and take stock of our summer plans.

I remember as a child marching in the local Memorial Day Parade and then traveling to Blossum Hill Cemetery to "visit" with my Grandparents. I remember loving all the flags waving and the beautiful flowers and plants that adorned all the graves.

I was brought up to marvel at the beauty and majesty that was Blossum Hill Cmetery. We would visit the duck pond and then look at all the grave markers and read about the people buried beneath the stones. It was always an event to visit the cemetery and honor those that resided there.

Now when I visit Blossum Hill I am still in awe of the people whose lives are reflected in the gravestones. The men and women who made up Concord's past and who tell their stories in their headstones are an incrediable source of History.

Blosum Hill hosts the famous such as Christa McCullife and Frank Rollins as well as the less well known such as Harriet Dame and Horace Blood. The cemetery also hosts those only known to their families and friends. But each individual buried there brings me closer to what Concord has been and what it is now.

The headstones tell varied stories from those of the brave men and women who gave their lives fighting for and defending the freedom we all enjoy to the tiny babys that died at birth but will always be held deep in the hearts of their parents. The graves tell stories of endless and timeless love as well as the stories of the realization of hopes and dreams.

This weekend between the parades and the bar-b-ques I hope everyone can find time to visit the cemeteries and pay homage to those who have come before us and maybe even read a few stories on the headstones about someone you never knew but whose lives helped shaped our city.