It’s been an extraordinary week for me and for us at Radio Boston. We’ve been collecting stories about remembrance, sacrifice and, the wounds of war carried by a very few in a country that seems largely untouched and uninvolved in that war seemingly so far away.
If you want to get a glimpse into how the war in Iraq has come home to small town America in ways that are largely unseen and unappreciated, check out what we heard this week in west central Massachusetts…
At left: Athol Memorial Hall
(Click on image to englarge. Click on post to read more)
Seventy five miles west of Boston, out on Route 2 and along the Millers River, close to Greater Boston’s water supply, lie the towns of Orange and Athol– I know them well because I live nearby. They supply more than their fair share of soldiers who’ve gone to Iraq.
And in a virtual town meeting we conducted last night in the Athol Memorial Town Hall, we heard the stories of soldiers, recruits, their families, and the veterans’ agents who are reaching out to help those coming back from war.
Last Saturday when two churches in Orange chose to toll their bells four thousand times in remembrance of that toll of American deaths in Iraq that had been reached on Easter Sunday, we were there to listen.
(From L to R: Toni Phillips, David Boeri, Andrew Simkewicz)
Click on image to see all the photos from our day at Athol Memorial Hall
I was stunned by how few people I met on the streets that day knew how many Americans have died in Iraq, even though it’s communities like these that are producing the disproportionate number of soldiers. Yet in terms of awareness, Orange and Athol are simply representative of the country as it turns out.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press indicates that only 28 percent of Americans know how many US personnel have been killed since the war in Iraq started.
By looking hard, we could have found the effects of the war in any community in the state, I bet, but those bells and that rite of remembrance were all the more reason to come here.
When you listen, I think you’ll be as touched as I was.
