Pam Taylor
Memorial Day. Decoration Day. Memory Day. Whatever you call it, it’s one of my very favorite holidays and a very busy time in Lenawee County. It’s a time to remember.
My dad was a member of the Blissfield Volunteer Fire Department and the American Legion Post 325 Robert Meachen. Memorial Day was a busy day for him; he’d drive a fire truck in Blissfield’s parade, then work at the Legion-sponsored chicken barbecue that followed. Quintessential Americana, and variations happen all over this nation, in rural areas, small towns and big cities.
Later on, my parents and I watched the parade from Dad’s favorite parking spot along U.S. 223. Sometimes we were joined by my uncle, a Navy veteran who became Lockheed Martin’s engineer-in-charge, combat systems, at Naval Air Station Oceana Dam Neck Annex in Virginia Beach. After the chicken barbecue, we visited family cemeteries, continuing a tradition started when my grandmother and her mother were alive.
By Bob Wessel
A trip from Petersburg to Blissfield is measured in minutes today. This was not the case when George Giles made the trip in 1826.
Giles was obliged to cut a 13-mile-long road through the wilderness and wetlands along the River Raisin to reach his new home in Blissfield.
Anyone looking across the lower eastern part of Lenawee County over the land between the River Raisin and the Ohio state line would never know that this flat picturesque area did not start out as the rich and productive farmland we see today. This land was once an untamed swamp, home to a wide range of wildlife and providing a fertile hunting ground for native Americans and newly arriving white settlers.