Cemetery inside O'Hare Airport marks one last Veterans Day
At the battle of Gettysburg, William Boerner promised God he would become a minister if his life was spared.
He kept that promise, served as the fourth pastor of St. John's United Church of Christ in Bensenville, and was one of 21 deceased veterans honored Thursday in a Veterans Day ceremony at the small St. Johannes Cemetery surrounded by O'Hare Airport.
Another veteran was Henry Jerger, who died as a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army while training British pilots in Oklahoma during World War II.
The family story is that the mechanics were not doing a good job of repairing planes, said Doug Jerger, Henry's son who now lives in Arlington, VA. and who talked in a telephone interview Thursday.
That led Henry Jerger to insist a mechanic would fly in the back seat of each AT-6 when it was returned to duty.
The elder Jerger piloted one of those flights himself, and just before it crashed he was seen on the wing of the distressed plane trying to get the mechanic out.
Thursday's ceremony for all veterans buried at St. Johannes was performed by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, organized by Jerome Kowalski, national chaplain.
The city of Chicago has obtained the cemetery for the expansion of O'Hare Airport, but St. John's and some relatives of people buried in the cemetery have appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.
The Chicago Department of Aviation is disappointed that the court has issued a stay, said Eve Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the department. She said relatives have voluntarily moved 30 bodies, and 125 more families are waiting to have the bodies of their loved ones relocated.
The ceremony Thursday was a traditional one that included the reading of veterans' names along with the Lord's Prayer, the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Kowalski said the Sons of Union Veterans did not want to be political but thought they should say goodbye if this is the last Veterans Day these men will spend where they were originally interred. The first burial was in 1849, and the last one in 2006, and the chaplain said the veterans are from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, both World Wars and the Korean conflict.
The Rev. Michael Kirchhoff, a member of St. John's, and a descendant of people buried at in the cemetery, said the white wooden crosses throughout St. Johannes mark graves whose tombstones were destroyed by vandals in the early 1950s when Division Street went straight through from Irving Park Road.
Karen Brooks of West Chicago, who arrived too late for Thursday's ceremony, thinks she's related to most of the people in the cemetery. She remembers moving from the family farmhome when the airport was built in the 1950s, and said she still brings her adult children and grandchildren back for family picnics. They usually sit near the cross that shows where St. John's church stood before it was moved to Route 83.
Brooks finds it a peaceful spot despite the Federal Express trucks and planes parked on two sides and constant truck and airplane traffic, not to mention the drive down roads where circles of razor wire top fences covered with fabric or lined with metal.
“It's like this sacred place. The whole world has changed, but you can close your eyes and feel you're grounded here. You can be touching God right here,” she said.