JEFF BEARDSLEY REMEMBERED AT GETTYSBURY NATL CEMETERY

On our recent trip to Washington, DC for meetings of some of my hereditary societies we took a nice trip to Winchester, VA to visit the Civil War sites there and then to Gettysburg.  I'd never been there, it was Jack's 4th visit.  I had a ggggrandfather who was there and know a lot about him and his experiences in the War so it was an exciting and moving visit for me.  I had promised Jeff Beardsley's sister that when there I would visit Jeff's grave and so we did.  It was a glorious day in the area, and the flowers and trees were in beautiful spring bloom.  Jeff is in a newer part of the National Cemetery, where we spotted veterans of Viet Nam, Korea and World War II.  It was a time of quiet reflection for me, thinking of our classmates and friends, especially those who have left us so early.  If you don't know, Jeff's sister found us on this blog when googling around one day last year.  Her family moved from Kirkwood after Jeff went off to college.  After two years he joined the service and went to Viet Nam.  Christine was only 12 I think she said when he graduated from KHS.  She felt she hardly knew her brother, and had had no contact with any of his friends.  Thanks to some of our classmates' reading this blog and Facebook entries, she has reconnected with Jeff's KHS girlfriend and some of his guy pals have also contacted her.  She now reports feeling far more at peace than she had in years.  Their mom is 90 years old now, and they live in Indiana.  

I was able to pull a few weeds and clean up the edges of the headstone and sit among the beautiful trees and ponder the impact of the loss of Jeff and all those other boys in that terrible war.  The trees surrounding that section of the cemetery are beautiful, stately, and provide a beautiful resting place for one to spend eternity.  
If any of you go to Gettysburg, Jeff is easy to find.   You can walk to his gravesite from the entrance from the main road around the cemetery, he is in section I position # 7.  Have a visit if you're there.

If you walk in this gate and head forward then off to the left you should find section I.  The directions we obtained at the Visitor Center for the Battlefield and area were terrible...took us way around where we didn't need to be.  However, the visit to the spot of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was moving.  As were the monuments to the 10th Mass Regiment in which my ggggrandfather served, and the 1st Ohio Light Cavalry in which another ancestor served.  The cemetery is really a must-see part of the Gettysburg experience.