"All gave some, some gave all."
Marion IN National Cemetery
On a sunny fall day in October, Gerald Dixon was laid to rest in the Marion National Cemetery: Dixon, a World War 1 US Army Veteran, had been one of 110 Black soldiers accused of mutiny in Houston, Texas. He was given a life sentence, served seven years, and was released on parole. Dixon died in 1967 and was buried in the Estates of Serenity in Marion. In 2023, the Army set aside his conviction, and he was granted an Honorable Discharge. On that sunny fall day in 2024, Pvt. Gerald Dixon was reinterred with full military honors.
After the service, some friends and I walked down the gently turning roads into silence. A fall breeze moved among the markers, standing stones in rows of military precision. On each tablet is inscribed a brief accounting of the person buried here. At the top is a symbol of religious belief, occasionally blank, of more significance to the onlooker than the deceased. Then the name, the full name, demands that the viewer say it aloud—prayers for the dead. Then rank, seemingly ironic in that death has no rank, in that we are equal in the grave—next, the branch of service and below that, the war. The dead are given context. The violent struggle for freedom, liberty, emancipation, territory, and colonization, against domination, for domination, against kings and dictators, are all invoked. Perhaps the most vital connection between the living and the dead is the dates of their lives. Some ended at 17, some at 25, and others at 40. Fortunate others made it to the biblical three score and ten and beyond.
The Marion National Cemetery, located at 1700 W. 38th Street, adjacent to the Northern Indiana Health Care System Marion Campus, is the final resting place of 14,500 veterans and their family members. It has been part of the National Cemetery System since 1973 and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973.
https://www.fwinkspot.com/in-touch/2024/11/10/in-touch-with-private-gerald-dixon-a-buffalo-soldier
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/database-research.htm#table