MARLBORO-As a longtime volunteer and chair of the town's new cemetery commission, Marcia Hamilton annually prepares for Memorial Day by helping place American flags at the graves of local soldiers.
This year, that tradition hit especially close to home with the latest addition to the list: The 102-year-old World War II hero she knew as Dad.
Richard Henry Hamilton was born to nearby Brattleboro farmers on Sept. 28, 1922. The family didn't plug into electricity until after he graduated from high school in 1940, which is why all were huddled around a battery-powered radio when President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for war after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
"Listening to that, we didn't know where Pearl Harbor was," Richard recalled in a 2015 National WWII Museum interview.
Drafted in 1942, the young Vermonter joined the Army Air Corps. He was serving as a radio operator and gunner on a B-17 bomber named "Destiny's Child" when it flew over Germany on July 20, 1944.
"When dots were spotted way back, we assumed that was our escort," Richard said.
Instead, the speeding specks were 60 enemy fighters that shot a wing off his plane. Richard saw bullets and a resulting blaze kill four crewmen before he and four others parachuted down 18,000 feet. Separated from his fellow soldiers, he soon found himself in a wheat field.
"The whole village seemed to turn out - with their clubs and pitchforks," he recalled in a 2008 Library of Congress interview. "I don't speak German, but I was introduced to it very suddenly."
Richard landed in the Stalag Luft IV prisoner-of-war camp. Jailed for 10 months, he was forced out on Feb. 6, 1945, for a multiweek death march.
"Day after day we were just on the road," he said. "There was no destination."
It instead led to dysentery, frostbite, blisters, body lice, and jaundice.
"My feet were black and blue and infected," he said of his 76th day. "I came to a decision that I wasn't going to go anymore."
Miraculously, that's when two Allied soldiers liberated him on April 24, 1945.
"When we saw the Statue of Liberty, I could just sense how those immigrants placed all their hopes and dreams in that," he said of his return home.
Service to community
Back in Vermont, Richard married his sweetheart, Joyce White, and moved to Marlboro. There, they acquired the Skyline Restaurant, which the couple ran atop Hogback Mountain until retiring almost 50 years later in 1994. Joyce died in 2005.
Ever busy, Richard also served on the town selectboard and school board, and as a constable, tax collector, and justice of the peace. He wound the clock in the Meeting House steeple until his hip was replaced at age 90. He commanded the Vermont chapter of American Ex-Prisoners of War.
And, after drawing faith by memorizing Psalm 91 during his capture (its line "He is my refuge and my fortress" appears on his gravestone), he helped Gideons International distribute Bibles to hotels, schools, and prisons.
Richard died at home on Feb. 19 at age 102, leaving four daughters, seven grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.
"He was still active" attending men's breakfasts, senior lunches and veterans' dinners, his obituary said.
Caring for those departed
Marlboro residents were still thinking about Richard Hamilton two weeks later when they voted to create a local cemetery commission.
According to state law, municipal gravesites are the responsibility of a town selectboard or city council unless a community "votes to place its public burial grounds under the charge of cemetery commissioners."
Marlboro approved Vermont's newest such commission in a 308–22 vote March 4, electing Marcia Hamilton and fellow volunteers Hollis Burbank-Hammarlund and Sally White to its three seats.
They're now working on spring cleanup, summer mowing, year-round green options and "a user-friendly flowchart to help the public navigate the burial process," according to meeting minutes.
"One thing we plan to do is create a policy to standardize the care each cemetery gets," Marcia said of the group, which has a $16,200 annual budget. "We're trying to show that a commission is a good idea by not having a spurt of expenditures. It's not going to cost any more money than it ever has."
Marcia and her family received help at her father's graveside service May 14 at King Cemetery. More than 200 friends, neighbors, veterans, and first responders assisted with a 21-gun salute, the playing of taps, and a U.S. Air Force flyover.
Shortly after, Marcia followed in the footsteps of her late mother by gathering three generations of her family to place American flags at the burial plots of local soldiers.
She started with her father and went as far back as Revolutionary War militiaman Elijah Bruce, who is believed to have fought at the Battle of Bennington in 1777 before dying from smallpox in 1835.
Each stone, she knows, has its own story.
This story was republished with permission from VTDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To support this work, please visit vtdigger.org/donate.
This News item by Kevin O'Connor originally appeared in VTDigger and was republished in The Commons with permission.