Old Free Church Cemetery. Monmouth Road. West Long Branch.  Click to enlarge. Paul Goldfinger photograph. 5/31/17   ©

Old Free Church Cemetery. Nov. 11, 2020. Paul Goldfinger photograph©

By Paul Goldfinger,  Editor @Blogfinger

I went by the Old Free Church Cemetery today, November 11, 2020,  to pay tribute to America’s veterans.  There were over a hundred veterans buried there from 1791-1895.  The one that caught my eye had two small American flags. It was the grave of a Revolutionary War veteran named William Tallman.

This historic burial ground has been lovingly maintained by the people of West Long Branch and the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution.

There are quite a  few such 18th century graves throughout New Jersey.   We saw some in New Brunswick, and in Trenton.

General  George Patton gave a speech in 1945 honoring his soldiers from the 3rd Army in Europe.  In his usual unfiltered style he said to the assembled crowd which included many soldiers, “You don’t have to be a corpse to be a hero.”

He was correct because Veterans Day  (formerly Armistice Day,) established officially in the 1970’s, honors veterans, dead and alive, always on November 11.

Below is a Blogfinger post from 2017 which tells of a visit to a certain neighborhood in West Long Branch:

The last time I saw a Revolutionary War grave was in Boston. But today, two  days after Memorial Day, I stumbled upon an old graveyard in West Long Branch, just near the border with Oakhurst.   I could see it from Monmouth Road as I drove by.

I turned into the next side street and found myself in front of a magnificent white Sephardic Synagogue called Congregation Magen Abraham. I was struck by how beautiful it was, so I climbed 2 flights of stairs and walked in.

A service was in progress for the holiday of Shavuot which commemorates the giving of the Torah (Bible) to the Jews at Mt. Sinai.  (the mountain, not the hospital) I checked out the entrance hall which had a Holocaust memorial and engineered a quick peak into the sanctuary—it was lovely.

Congregation Magen Abraham, founded in West Long Branch (Monmouth road) in 1976. Internet photo.

It turns out that this congregation is related to others in Deal and also has roots in the Syrian-American Jewish Community which came to this part of the Jersey Shore from Brooklyn.

I didn’t stay because my actual destination was the Old Free Church Cemetery one block away.  It was a pretty, leafy graveyard, about two acres, with a history.  It seems that the land was donated in 1791 for a church  (The Old Free Church)  and a burial ground.  The church was “destroyed” in 1934.

There are 103 graves dating from 1791 to 1895, and about 25 are for veterans.   Since 1976 (the Bicentennial) it has been lovingly preserved by the town of West Long Branch.

I saw stones from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. They were mostly unreadable.   Small flags had been placed for veterans along with commemorative shields.

It is wonderful to see how these grave-sites have been preserved.  After all, without George Washington and the Continental Army, we would all be saying “bugger,”  “bollocks”, “pip pip” and “cheers.”

ERIC WHITACRE:   5 Hebrew Love Songs,  with the University of Miami Chorale:

This piece is called “Temuna”  (A picture)

“A picture is engraved in my heart;
Moving between light and darkness:
A sort of silence envelopes your body,
And your hair falls upon your face just so.”