Navigating the history & heritage of Arlington

Peter Greenberg TODAY Travel Editor • Profile

What do Presidents William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy have in common, along with 16 astronauts,  Robert Peary (who discovered the North Pole), Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thurgood Marshall and Chief Justice Earl Warren? And more than 300,000 other Americans?

They are all in their final resting place, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia — right across the bridge from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Each year, thousands of visitors pay their respects to the men and women buried here, who include casualties of the Revolutionary War, Beirut and Grenada, Operation “Just Cause” in Panama, the Persian Gulf War and other military engagements.

While it may be hard — at first thought — to think of a cemetery as a tourist destination, the 600 acres of Arlington represent much more than simply a burial ground. It is an iconic American destination where we pay tribute to our own heroic icons.

Arlington Cemetery, as you might suspect, has its own very special history. At the west entrance you can see one of the more poignant elements of Arlington: the phrase “Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country”).

Then there is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers/Tomb of the Unknowns. It’s on top of the hill, with a view of the city. It remains one of the most popular sites in the cemetery, and contains the remains of unknown American soldiers from WWI, WWII and Korea. (The remains of an unknown soldier from Vietnam were there until 1998. They subsequently identified the soldier; he was later buried in Missouri, and now the crypt lies empty.)

But it is not alone. Since April 6, 1948, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, rain or shine. You’ve probably seen the guards, or the Sentinels for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, doing the very precise rituals — it takes six months to a year to train to be a sentinel, and only about 10 to 15 percent of applicants pass. The training includes memorizing verbatim 17 pages of information about the history of the tomb, who is buried there, etc. The sentinels also need to learn each precise marching step and rifle position.

Then there are the buglers. One of the signature trademarks of Arlington is that each burial/memorial service has live buglers, not recorded music. Buglers at the National Cemetery are an elite group. They are drawn from the premier Washington bands of the Army, Navy and Air Force. It’s the equivalent of getting into a symphony orchestra — most are conservatory graduates, most have a master’s degree, and many have doctorates.

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