Quayle Calls Fallen the Pillars on Which Freedom Rests : Nation Honors Its Departed Heroes

Americans on Monday remembered those who died for their country, from wars long past to last month’s explosion aboard the battleship Iowa, while others celebrated Memorial Day as the traditional start of summer.

The weather cooperated with outdoor festivities over much of the nation, but it was unseasonably cold in Montana, where Great Falls received 6 inches of snow, the National Weather Service said.

In a brief ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, a 20-member military honor guard laid a wreath at the grave of John F. Kennedy to mark what would have been the former President’s 72nd birthday. No members of the slain President’s family attended.

Across the hilltop where Kennedy is buried, Vice President Dan Quayle placed the presidential wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

In remarks to more than 5,000 people, Quayle called the servicemen who died for their country “our nation’s true heroes, the solid pillars upon which our freedom rests.”

Among the honored dead were some of the most recent: the 47 sailors who died April 19 aboard the Iowa in an explosion inside one of the battleship’s huge gun turrets. President Bush had designated Memorial Day as a national day of remembrance for the sailors.

In prayers before a parade in Portsmouth, Va., a few miles from where the Iowa is anchored, Lt. Cmdr. Fred Thompson, head of chaplains aboard the carrier, remembered the 47 sailors.

“Today, Lord, fresh upon our minds is the sacrifice made by 47 men aboard the USS Iowa,” he said. “Help us remember that even in peacetime there is danger, and that military service may demand our all.”

Veterans in Westwood, Mass., visited the grave of Robert Steele, the drummer boy who at the age of 13 joined in the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill with the Dedham militia.

“He fought through the entire Revolutionary War, and in 1825, when they built the Bunker Hill monument, he beat his drum again when they dedicated the monument,” said Jim Sullivan, director of veterans services for Westwood.

Union Soldiers

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis attended a ceremony at the National Cemetery in Beaufort, S.C., to rebury the remains of 19 black Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War. They were buried in a military cemetery that apparently was forgotten after the Civil War, and were found two years ago during road construction. They were identified as members of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiment and the 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment.

Ten airmen who died when their bomber crashed 10 days before the D-Day invasion in 1944 were honored at a new memorial near their crash site outside South Hadley, Mass.

The memorial “is all we can hope for, a warm place where the butterflies play high up on the mountaintop,” said Frank Tencza, who organized the weekend ceremony at the new granite marker and helped locate the soldiers’ remaining family members. More than 70 relatives attended.

In Hawaii, the waters of Pearl Harbor surrounding the USS Arizona Memorial were filled with flowers to remember servicemen killed in the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.