If you’re so inclined to take a stroll through Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo and you happen to find yourself by Mirror Lake, look around at the tombstones. If you’re lucky (it ought to be easy to find, it’s the only one with the huge flagpole), you’ll find one that reads:
Sara M. Hinson
Dedicated Teacher
Who with Others
Gave Us Flag Day
1841 – 1926
On February 25, 1841, George Hinson’s wife gave birth to a baby girl. The parents named her Sara. Sara Hinson would go through the Buffalo School System before being sent to finishing school. Upon completion of her education, she began teaching at Buffalo PS 13 before being moved to School #4. In 1864, as the Civil War was ending, Hinson was 23 and she transferred to School #31, where she taught the fourth grade for thirty years before spending the next twenty as principal.
Hinson is credited with being one of the first to advocate the celebration of Flag Day. Although Continue Reading “Wisconsin Wins This One”
Remembering Armistice Day and Celebrating Veterans Day
Today is Veterans Day. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, an armistice between opposing sides formally ended the fighting of ‘The Great War.” This was called “the war to end all wars” because the world realized the deadly nature of technology had finally convinced everyone that there was no romance of war.
Perhaps the fact that America learned this lesson a half century earlier in its own Civil War explains our country’s late entry into “The World War” (yet another name used to define the conflict that raged from 1914-1918. Indeed, it was William Tecumseh Sherman who Continue Reading “Remembering Armistice Day and Celebrating Veterans Day”