Flower Strewing for Heroes of Social Construction

28 May 1925 | The American Israelite

Flower Strewing for Heroes of Social Construction

On May 30^th at 8:00 A.M., the third annual “Flower Strewing For Heroes of Social Construction” will be held near the North Gate of Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati. With due solemnities, flowers will be placed upon the graves of a factory worker, a railroader, a policeman, and a fireman who died in the performance of their duties, and of a woman who died in childbirth; the thought being that, on the day when the heroes of the battlefield are remembered, honors should also be accorded those heroes who died not in the act of taking life but in the act of giving and preserving life. Wide publicity for the event is being sought in the hopes that the ceremony may become initiated by other groups in other localities. The inter-racial, inter-denominational committee in charge consists of Rev. Geo. A. Thayer, Rev. E.H.Oxley, Rev. Mark Cain S.J., Miss Jennie D. Porter, Miss Dorothy Hart, Dr. F. K. Farr, Prof. Ernest Talbert, Dr. George A. Hedger, Prof. Henry Englander, Dr. Jacob Kaplan, Rabbi James G. Heller, and Abraham Cronbach. The program among whose participants will be a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a woman, and a colored person, will be as follows:

Hymn, “Say Not They Die,” Choir, directed by Prof. A. Z. Idlesohn, (Hebrew Union College Faculty)

Prayer, Rabbi Walter G. Peiser

Reading from Horace Traubel, Prof. Wm. J. Decatur

Address, Rev. Jesse Halsey,

Words Spoken at Each Grave, Miss Eleanor Mulvihill

Benediction, Rev. Gilbert P. Symnons

A Boy Scout Troop led by Mr. Sidney Unger will also participate.

31 May 1925 | Cincinnati Enquirer

Heroes of Peace Honored | Special Service Conducted at Spring Grove Cemetery

A factory worker, a railroader, a policeman, and a mother who died in childbirth—representatives of that great multitude of every day, but unsung, heroes—were honored at special memorial services conducting at Spring Grove Cemetery yesterday as a part of the annual Memorial Day program . . . In the group that took part in the services were representatives of all creeds, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish men and women, white and negro. It was a nonsectarian, nonracial memorial service, intended to honor all in behalf of all.

Rev. Jesse Halsey, pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, was the memorial speaker. He sounded the sentiment of the service in his memorial address. He said: “We commemorate the heroes of peace. Simply and nobly they lived. Unsung, unheralded, they marched to their heroic mausoleum. The companions of the Great Creator, the constructionists, the men and women of the unnumbered multitudes who, in humble ways and dangerous place, served their generation and fell asleep—for these we pause to breathe a prayer of gratitude and here in God’s acres, in the morning watch, we chant our requiem of peace.

“We condemn in ourselves and in others the sins of oppression and greed. We cry out with the righteous anger of the valiant hearted against the hatred of competition, the waste and desolation of war, and he needless sacrifice of life on the altar of Mammon. We dedicate ourselves in the spirit of the true hearted, whose memory we this day recall, to the constructive purposes of the cooperative commonwealth of God; seeking to hand down our common heritage, made fairer by our use, to those who come after us; and to this end we pledge our time and thought and strength to speed the coming day of beauty and righteousness . . .”