Grave distinction

'By CANDACE CHASE/The Daily Inter Lake

Group honors veterans at Lone Pine Cemetery

Carol Beck-Edgar found a lot of military and Montana history in a small plot of ground behind the Little Brown Church in Bigfork.

For about five years, she and other volunteers have worked to find and identify the graves of veterans in the Lone Pine Cemetery. It's part of the Bigfork VFW and American Legion's Memorial Day observances.

"We go out the Saturday before and place a flag on every veteran's grave," she said.

In preparation for flag placing, volunteers armed with rakes and weed whackers locate and tidy up overgrown graves.

Beck-Edgar, her husband, Bill Edgar IV, and his father, Bill Edgar III, and her friends Vickie and Chuck Leveque toiled together under a scorching sun the weekend of May 17, slowly checking off veterans' names.

"Last year it was really cold," she recalled.

Rain or shine, Beck-Edgar brings her list of about 130 veterans including people who served in the Civil War, the Spanish American War and many from World War I and World War II.

The roll call keeps growing.

"Every year in this cemetery we add a couple more to the list," she said. "We're losing 1,500 World War II veterans every day."

She felt the loss on their work Saturday with a reduced crew because United Veterans of the Flathead had two funerals scheduled for full military honors. But the five of them soldiered on, cutting back grass and searching under lilac bushes and junipers for lost veteran graves.

Because of similar efforts all across the nation, appreciation of service doesn't end with the 21-gun salute and "Taps" played at military funerals. Many volunteers, such as Beck-Edgar and Vickie Leveque, devote the time because they have family members who served in various wars.

Leveque said she hopes that people in other towns do the same for her family's veterans. She recalled learning from her son that a young man had identified and placed a flag on her father's grave in Las Vegas on a previous Memorial Day.

"So people there must be pretty good about it," she said. "It sort of restores your faith in the younger generation."

Beck-Edgar said she depends on patriots in North Carolina to honor her grandfather's service in World War I. The tradition of military service in her family includes both her mother and father, Connie and Harry Boetcher.

"They met during World War II at Merced Army Air Field, later renamed Castle," she said. "They got married in their uniforms in 1943."

Her husband served in Vietnam in the Navy in a river-boat patrol unit.

Beck-Edgar recalled how her mother instilled the values represented by Memorial Day by teaching her Girl Scout troop the proper decorum of the colors and honoring military service.

Her mother practiced what she preached, taking the time every Memorial Day to visit Lone Pine Cemetery. Until her death, she attended to the grave of Hollis Broderick, a veteran and friend whose family moved away.

"Every year, my mother would bring flowers to Brod's grave," Beck-Edgar said, looking down at the headstone.

She carries on the tradition as she attends to the graves of veterans she met posthumously such as Thomas Clydesdale, a native of Scotland.

"He served with the Gordon Highlanders in World War I," she said.

A history major in college, Beck-Edgar savors the details she has unearthed about Clydesdale, who lived from 1886 to 1968. She learned that he had an close association with Cornelius Kelley, the founder of Anaconda Copper.

"He was the butler for Cornelius Kelley," she said.

Kelley was one of the two Copper Kings who established Kootenai Lodge. Every summer, the copper baron came by private railroad car to the resort on Swan Lake.

"I understand that Thomas [never Tom] ran the estate with military precision," Beck-Edgar said.

After Kelley retired and sold the lodge, Clydesdale and his wife settled in Bigfork. Beck-Edgar brushed back pine cones and dead leaves to get a better look at the graves in the family plot.

They include Clydesdale's wife, Berthe, who lived from 1892 to 1964, and his daughters Lucile and Valentine. Beck-Edgar said many Bigfork old-timers remember Valentine, who died in 1999.

"As you can see from the condition of the graves, she was the last one," she said.

Beck-Edgar honored Thomas' grave with a small Union Jack she created with her ink-jet printer. She obtained the real thing for Memorial Day ceremonies by tapping a public relations colleague, Robert Titley.

"He's a very proper Brit," she said with a laugh. "I called him and told him we needed a Union Jack."

While most of the other veterans receive the U.S. flag, they represent a huge range of conflicts and varieties of service. Beck-Edgar said one man served in the cavalry in World War I.

"That's the last time they used horses," she said. "After that, they went to tanks."

Old cemeteries show the evolution in military grave markers. Lone Pine has some of the historic white markers used before flat headstones came into vogue. Beck-Edgar said she has seen Confederate grave markers in other areas that come to a point at the top.

"That was so no Yankee would ever sit on their grave," she said with a laugh.

Civil War veterans in the historic Bigfork cemetery, such as Charles Morrell, wore the blue uniforms of the Union side. His marker said he fought with Company E, 9th Maine Volunteers.

"As you walk through here, you begin to appreciate the history resting in this grave yard," she said.

Their work each year resembles a treasure hunt as they discover obscured graves or learn new information about the men, women and sometimes children left for eternity in the hallowed ground behind the Little Brown Church.

One grave marked by a little stone with a tiny angel inscribed "Joshoa" speaks volumes with one word. Others, with names such as Jens Johan Jensen, remind visitors of Bigfork's Scandinavian heritage.

Beck-Edgar remembers fondly a professor who taught history as more than dates and places.

"History is people - it's the story of people, that's all it is," she said. "You could teach a history class here that maybe kids would remember."

They could ponder the marker of World War II veteran Kenneth O. Eslick, a tech sergeant in the Army Air Corps who became a prisoner of war. Other graves reveal World War I as a conflict that included men galloping into battle on horseback while others had dogfights in the air.

"When you stop and think about these things, it's amazing," Beck-Edgar said.

Many of the grave markers, however, provide no clue about military service.

"If anyone knows someone who was in the military and it's not marked on the grave, we would sure like to know about it," Beck-Edgar said. "We'd like to honor them. That's what's this is all about."

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.§