The entrance gates of Nashville National Cemetery on Gallatin Road in Madison.

-- Tim Ghianni | The Ledger

A volley of gunshots slightly interrupts my calm as I stand on one of my favorite knolls in the Nashville National Cemetery.

Of course, nowadays, volleys of gunshots can be heard too often in the Nashville area. Generally, it signals something bad has happened, the result of greed, anger or mortal stupidity.

But this gunfire is different. Muffled by city sounds, these shots signal the passing of another American hero. A proud farewell and burial for some old soldier who finally and, for real, did fade away.

These old soldiers – veterans of virtually every stripe, bird, star and cluster – are the reason we celebrate Memorial Day. Go ahead and take flowers to Grandma’s spot in the family cemetery. She deserves them. I still miss mine, and they’ve both been dead more than four decades.

Coleman

And enjoy that cold beer, the grilled-to-black hotdogs and perhaps even that boat ride during this day that has become to most people just the beginning of summer.

But don’t forget why Donna F. Coleman, program support assistant and contracting officer representative for the cemetery, spends much of her time on these grounds and why she and cemetery representative Bill Hartley have been scrambling, keeping maintenance crews busy, making sure every one of the 36,000 white marble headstones are as straight as possible…. “like soldiers in formation,” she says … for Memorial Day (May 29).

Hired hands pridefully have been manicuring the lawn of this sprawling cemetery whose roots stretch back to the Civil War.

“Memorial Day is one of the National Cemetery’s busiest, most-hectic days, and I love it,” Donna adds.

“Thanks for thinking about the veterans,” says Bill, who laments that “we will never forget” has been pretty well forgotten.

While you’re likely enjoying a day off, Donna and Bill will be here at the cemetery, on their busiest day, making sure everything is OK for the fallen soldiers and their flower-carrying survivors.

It’s a day the cemetery stewards anxiously anticipate and celebrate.

“I’ll be here if I’m alive and the creek don’t rise,” Donna says from the administration building toward the rear of the cemetery.

“You see people who come out to visit on Memorial Day, and you want to make sure everything is right for them to honor those who have passed on.”

I had been driving slowly through the National Cemetery – something I do if I’m in this part of town.

I also go to the Spring Hill Cemetery just across Gallatin Road to say “hello” to John “Gentle on My Mind” Hartford, Earl and Louise Scruggs (who spent a day trying to track down Bob Dylan for me as I gathered quotes for the newspaper when Cash died), Bobby “Sunny” Hebb and others I have been lucky enough to know because of years spent in entertainment journalism. (Heck, there’s even a Bill Monroe monument there, though he is buried beneath a towering 30-foot-tall monument in his hometown of Rosine, Kentucky.)

On this day at the National Cemetery, I was wandering the narrow roads, stopping often to get out of the car and shoot a picture or two of the markers, read names, think of all the stories I wish I could rescue for a moment at least. But those stories faded into time and rich soil.

One marker catches my eye, almost by accident or perhaps by providence because of my love of musicians.

It is for Army veteran Ferry Melvin Kernodle, beneath whose name is chiseled “Slim” and “One of the Bluegrass Boys.” “Slim” was his nickname when he worked for Mr. Monroe. According to Legacy.com, he also went by the nickname “Bunky.”

Awaiting time for a burial, a hearse driver nurses his black transport into a shady spot and climbs outside to grab a quick smoke while gazing across this garden of souls, shrubs and such. The driver snuffs his cigarette – likely field-stripping it, but I can’t tell from my distance. He climbs back into the limo of death to lead a procession along the silent roadways, finally stopping near an awning where loved ones will watch their friend, their mentor or hero, their mom or dad, their son or daughter lowered into the ground.

Not wanting to intrude on some family’s sorrow, I get back in my old Saab and drive slowly out of eyeshot of the mourners of an American hero.

That leads me back to this knoll from which I can look in every direction and truly appreciate the symmetry of the placement of white marble headstones, 36,000 souls standing at attention, I suppose. Nowadays, the precision of the rows is assured by use of GPS. I guess measuring sticks and keen eyesight were used in the pre-GPS days.

If you’ve never visited this cemetery – it is open 24 hours a day – you need to, if for no other reason than to be mesmerized by the countless rows of headstones rolling all the way to the horizon.

I smile briefly and wonder how Jerry Garcia and other beloved psychedelians would react if they stood here and stared across the endless field of white markers marching across this rolling acreage. Long, strange trip, indeed.

I am far enough from the mourners that I can barely see their cars and the awning on the horizon. Donna had told me there were to be three burials on this day.

Standing here, not that far from a monument celebrating the Minnesotans who had died in the War Between the States, I think about what is happening at graveside. Flags folded almost rhythmically and presented to spouses or children. The playing of “Taps.” Someone perhaps gently tossing a red rose stem or fresh tulip on the casket before it is lowered for the rest of time into the ground of the National Cemetery.

It’s a pastoral final resting place that’s stark contrast to ultra-urban Gallatin Road that honks and squeals past the front gate of the cemetery established in 1867.

Some of the dead I’m visiting on this day gave all, dying in combat as far back as Mr. Lincoln’s days. Others died of old age, the malady which now is robbing us of our “Greatest Generation” of men and women who saved the world from that vile punk Hitler and his nauseating accomplices in war crimes.

Most of these 36,000 veterans did not fall on the field of combat. After all, they were human beings. Like the rest of us, they have died in traffic accidents or perhaps from disease. Some found their post-combat world so complicated they took their own lives.

There’s no way to keep from battling with my emotions whenever I stand, surrounded by dead heroes, on this knoll and survey the cemetery where soldiers, their spouses, their family members rest in eternal peace.

Melancholy mental meandering is interrupted by a CSX freight train that blocks my line of sight for a few moments as it clatters through the cemetery. You drive through a narrow tunnel beneath these tracks to get from the front of the cemetery to its rear.

“I feel like it’s my calling,” explains Donna, describing why she has spent the last 21 years of her life devoted to not just the stones and the dead, but to the families.

She says it is rewarding to her to ease the stress that piles atop the sorrow on the worst days for some families.

By helping to make the burial arrangements, she is not just being kind. She’s not just doing her job either. To her this simply is the place where she is supposed to be.

“I try to make sure everything on our end is as painless as it can be for them.”

And when she is not busy hearing stories about the veterans or helping their families through the burial maze – families must deal with the funeral homes on their own, but as soon as they pass the archway over the Gallatin Road entry to the cemetery, it’s all handled by the government, aka Donna and Bill in this case.

Some days – such as this day of burials at 11 a.m., 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. – Rudy Arnold also is here at the cemetery.

As director of the Chattanooga, Nashville and Knoxville National Cemeteries, he spends as much time as possible looking after the needs of approximately 100,000 dead veterans from the Volunteer state.

“My job is that I’m responsible for all the maintenance, finance, burials, all those operations that take place at the National Cemeteries I’m responsible for,” he says.

Like Donna, he was called to this duty and he never looks back. His “caller” was an aortic aneurism in his heart that was discovered after he left his job at Pepsi and went to work as caretaker of the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery in his hometown of Rittman, a speck on the map near Akron.

When he recovered, he realized that lifting headstones and the like – which was part of his regular duty at the Rittman cemetery – was no way for a person with heart trouble to have a long and healthy career.

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this for the rest of my life,” he says, recalling his thoughts after the aneurism was repaired. “It’s probably was the best thing that ever happened to me. It put things in perspective, told me not to take any days for granted, that’s for sure.”

The monument in Nashville National Cemetery to Minnesotans who died in Middle Tennessee during the Civil War.

-- Tim Ghianni | The Ledger

Personal feelings about fallen comrades, brothers in arms, drew him full time into the administrative side of running national cemeteries. He only came to Tennessee a few months ago after serving a stint at a cemetery in St. Pete.

This is very personal for him. You see, he lost some friends in the Middle Eastern wars conducted by George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“I served in the Ohio National Guard,” he says, explaining the events that took him away from Pepsi.

“I was activated for hurricanes Katrina and Gustav… and for 15 months we were a provisional unit in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“We were the 518th Gun Truck CVO,” he adds. “Our job was to escort convoys. We averaged a least every other day some type of engagement” during that invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq.

Not all of the soldiers he served with made it back to Rittman. No, there were no weapons of mass destruction. But there were gun-toting Iraqis loyal to Saddam or to terror in general. And there were roadside bombs, the improvised explosive devices that have killed and crippled so many of our troops.

When his heart healed, “the opportunity to serve our veterans definitely appealed to me.”

Eleven years into this career, he juggles its weight.

“There definitely is a lot of responsibility. Not just for myself but to personnel (like Donna and Bill) who have to take families to the site. Our people do it exceptionally well.

“The most rewarding thing to me is helping the families on the worst day of their life; to have the ability to be able to assist those families is an incredible thing.”

His voice smiles in pride at what he and his staff do, not just on Memorial Day, but year-round. “Every day is Memorial Day for us as employees at the National Cemeteries.”

For those not preoccupied by brew, brisket, buns and butts), Memorial Day is the one time a year they visit the cemeteries.

“We have a lot of visitors,” he says, adding activities actually begin Saturday, when Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts carry flags to plant by each headstone in veterans cemeteries.

The most important part of his job –tending to the young killed in the current wars as well as the men and women of WWII, Korea, Vietnam, all veterans of all eras, has brought him in contact with so many families.

“When I see those stones, it’s a person. That’s a story. That’s almost 100,000 stories” represented by the symmetrical stones in the three cemeteries he commands. (And that’s not counting the thousands and thousands buried in the state veterans cemeteries, like the one out on McCrory Lane in Nashville.)

“Each family that visits may not see the 100,000 headstones. They see the one headstone… and they know the story behind it.

“They can put a face and a name behind that headstone. And we want to hear those stories. And some of those stories involve lives cut short in defense of what we believe in.

“There’s nothing to me like when you meet a veteran or a spouse and they tell you about their loved one,” he adds. “I’m very fortunate to do this on a daily basis.”

Nashville National Cemetery’s Donna also cherishes the opportunity to learn those stories. And she also is devoted deeply to making sure the grounds are pristine.

“The first thing that hits me (when entering the cemetery every day) is pride. Grounds look good, headstones look good.

“I work here, yes, but this cemetery belongs to everyone, every mother, father, son, husband and wife. This cemetery belongs to them. It represents so much. So many people have died and are buried here. It’s our duty to take care of this place.”

Her own father, Isaac Russell Roland Jr., a peacetime soldier who died three years ago, is buried here, so she not only cares for the families of the fallen, she shares their experience.

“God, this is a beautiful place,” Donna says. “You look at all the headstones and know what they represent.”

She adds that not enough people really know what this holiday is about. “Veterans Day (Nov. 11) is for the living. Memorial Day (May 29) is for the deceased. Honoring their memory is what we do.

“Even with all the hectic planning, I look forward to it.”

When I’m back up on my favorite knoll, my eyes move from row to row of the dead, whose number far exceeds that of a full military division.

I never served in the military. Didn’t want to, either, and celebrated when I drew a very safe No. 280 in the draft lottery. I am a patriot. I just had no desire to kill or die young. Many of my contemporaries neither drew a high (and lucky) draft number nor made it back from Vietnam. I think about them as I study the graveyard.

After my lingering survey of the white headstones, I say a soft “Thanks” and climb back in my old Saab.