Without a lot fanfare, Midcoast residents observed Memorial Day in their unique pensive ways. Without parades and ceremonies, Honor Guard salutes and marching bands, and large family and community picnics, the day was quieter than usual, but no less thoughtful. 

This was the first year in many that the local Memorial Day ceremonies did not begin with an early morning playing of ‘Taps’ by a Camden Hills Regional High School Marching Band student at the Rockville Cemetery, on Route 17 in Rockport. Usually, that is the first stop, at 8 a.m., on a full day for the high school musicians. With a pandemic, not this year.

But the cemetery was not empty.

Bernard Jackson, Jr., was cleaning and raking the sod near the large gravestone that marks where his parents lie. It is close to other family gravestones of his uncles and aunts.

Carefully picking out the roots of the crab grass and weeds, Jackson had pots of compost and grass seed ready to spread over the turned up soil.

In the back of his pickup, he carried 20 gallons of water that he would use to soak the soil before heading back to his home in Liberty.

While kneeling in the grass, Jackson spoke about his father, a combat veteran, and his uncles, also combat veterans, all during World War II.

“My dad served in the South Pacific, his brother was in the South Pacific, and his other brother served in Europe, under General Patton,” said Jackson.

The brothers – Bernard, Roland and Irving — all grew up in North Searsmont, the sons of George and Margie Jackson.

Bernard, Sr., had married Doris Weymouth, who herself had been raised in Rockland. That’s where Bernard and Doris settled, and where Bernard Jackson, Jr., grew up, graduating in 1963 from Rockland High School. The seniors of 1963 represented the first class to graduate in the newly built high school on Broadway.

Bernard, Jr., talked as he tended the grass, describing his large Midcoast Maine family, which seemed to grow with every sentence: Cousins in Waldo and Knox counties, children and seven grandchildren and extended family in Southern Maine (after graduating from Springfield College in 1967, Bernard, Jr., taught in South Portland for 28 years, coaching football, lacrosse, soccer, intramural and others sports).

He and his wife, Patricia, raised their own children in Yarmouth, and now the family extends even further into Southern Maine and Southern New England.

But the couple would eventually circle back to Midcoast Maine, to be closer to those buried near to where he now was gently tending the soil. 

“My father was one of nine kids, my mother was one of nine kids, and my wife of 53 years, this next month, is one of nine,” he said.

Patricia Kenney, grew up in Belfast, and Bernard spoke about the day he first caught sight her, almost falling off the construction ladder because she was so good looking.

“Thank God for the cedar tree, because that would have been an embarrassing entrance,” he said.

He asked her to go to the Union Fair, and that clinched the start of a long relationship.

After years in Cumberland County, they returned to Waldo County to turn a camp on Lake St. George into a year-round home.

Bernard, Jr., doesn’t drive down from Liberty a lot to the Rockville Cemetery — life is busy at age 76, with family and many projects — but he is taking care of the ground where his parents and cousins and aunts and uncles lie. Family is important, alive and in spirit. Not to mention all the friends and their families also lying nearby in the same cemetery, and whose names roll off his tongue with ease.

In the Rockville Cemetery, numerous small America flags fluttered in the breeze, standing watch over the gravestones of even more veterans. Some headstones also bore the blue flags of Masons. It is a graveyard of hard working Americans, many of whom served overseas.

Bernard, Sr., never discussed his time fighting in World War II with his family. Likewise, the uncles never talked about war.

“The only thing my Dad told me is that he saw a Japanese anti-aircraft fly over and he could see the helmet and eyes of the Japanese soilder, but that was near the end of the war and they were ordered not to shoot them down,” Bernard, Jr., said. “He wouldn’t tell me anything else. He never wanted to talk about it.”

“My Uncle Roland was in the Battle of the Bulge, under Patton,” he said. “He had PTSD. One of the nicest man you could ever meet.”

Roland is buried in Bangor,. Bernard’s grandfather Jackson and other family members are buried in Morrill.

Bernard. Jr., doesn’t know much about what Irving did in the South Pacific, but he came home, got married, and raised his family in Bangor, where he is now buried.

“That was a terrible thing, the South Pacific,” said Bernard. “It was pretty horrific.”

Bernard and Patty will be buried in the Rockville Cemetery. They have a plot down on the corner of the expansive green that edges into a line of trees. Above the cemetery rises the western edge of Beech Hill.

“I used to rake a lot of blueberries up in those fields,” Bernard said, gesturing behind him.

But his energy now was intent on getting the grass by his parents in good shape, and greened up.

What is the value in tending to the family grave site, I asked him.

“Respect,” he said, softly, as a cool and fragrant Memorial Day breeze fell across the cemetery.

Reach Editorial Director Lynda Clancy at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 207-706-6657.