Read time: 7 min.

I always thought Memorial Day was just for honoring U.S. military personnel who died in service. This year, though, something shifted: my mom invited me to help decorate the graves of some long-ago relatives who never served. Her gesture reframed my understanding! On Memorial Day itself, I found myself standing in a quiet cemetery in rural Huntington County paying tribute to Bert Anson- a man who never wore a uniform but became a big influence.

Dr. Bert Anson was my dad’s great-uncle by marriage. “Uncle Bert” was a name I’d heard every now and then, and I knew he was a historian. I also knew he wrote a book about Indians, and that I’d met him just days after I was born. For most of my life, that’s all I put together. 

Later, I dug deeper into Bert’s story. Born in Huntington in 1908, he was a standout athlete who earned thirteen varsity letters in football before graduating from DePaul University. In 1933, he married Cornelia Earhart, my great-grandmother’s sister. My family knew Bert’s wife as Auntie Dee. 

The more I learned, the more the tidbits I’d heard as a kid seemed to come to life. Bert was a teacher in Huntington and South Bend before he earned another degree from Indiana University. In 1958, he became the chair of the history department at Clarion State Teachers’ College. He moved on to Ball State three years later and taught until 1976. Over the years, Dr. Anson, as I should probably be calling him, became a respected authority on Indiana history. He was widely published and capped a lifetime of research with his landmark book, The Miami Indians.

Dr. Anson’s impact went beyond the classroom and the page. He was even president of the Indiana Historical Society! What’s more is that Uncle Bert shared a real connection with my dad, especially once Dad started teaching at Ball State, Anderson College, and I.U. East. Mom said the two of them formed a mutual admiration society! They could talk for hours. 

Maybe that’s why I met Uncle Bert so early in life. In 1990, I was born in Anderson with a case of jaundice. Instead of keeping me in the hospital, the doctor gave the okay for me to head home to Fort Wayne to be tested at the pediatrician’s office. Uncle Bert and Auntie Dee had retired to Warren, Indiana, by then. Tiny, orange, and a few days old, I made my first family visit on my first trip home.

I don’t remember that visit, of course, but it feels like a fitting start to my lifetime, which in many ways has been shaped by deep family ties. Mom always spoke warmly of Uncle Bert and Auntie Dee. They were kind and smart. Auntie Dee was active in the DAR. Uncle Bert was more reserved, with a dry wit and a mind like an encyclopedia. He wore Mr. Rogers sweaters and smoked a pipe. 

My dad’s best friend used to say that watching Uncle Bert with a pipe was like watching a one-man show. He could turn it into a full-blown spectator sport! I’d have liked Uncle Bert a lot, and he’d like me too, I think. Unfortunately, Auntie Dee died at eighty-eight just after my first birthday. Bert died three months later at eighty-four. Along with his parents, the Ansons are buried in Huntington County’s Union Cemetery. 

Even though Bert Anson was a respected scholar and I’m just an amateur behind a keyboard, our shared love of history and our meeting in 1990 felt like reason enough to visit his grave on Memorial Day. More than that, I was feeling a deep need for connection. Reminding myself of the long, unbroken thread of family and place that helps define me has always helped me stay grounded, especially when I’m depressed. Lately, I have been.

I didn’t really feel up to driving all the way to Huntington, but I went anyway. Sometimes, you just have to power through the Bipolar if you can. I took the long way and wound through the countryside until I finally came upon Union Church: a sprawling structure that had clearly grown with time. Across the road, kids scrambled across a playground. In contrast, I was in a quieter mood. I’d come to visit the graveyard.

I climbed out of the car and started wandering, not really sure where to look. I didn’t know exactly where the Ansons were buried, but I found the stone within minutes. There it was: a simple, trapezoidal marker resting on a rectangular base. I stood there for a second, unsure of what to do next. Say something? Salute? Wink? Break into the Charleston? I’d never really visited the grave of someone whom I felt I knew so well, but was essentially a stranger. As I stood there, the moment felt bigger than I expected.

As it turned out, I started blathering like an idiot. “Hello,” I said, much too loudly. “You don’t really know me, but I know you. I met you when I was a baby, and you’ve been a big influence on my life!” 

Believe it or not, it sounded more stupid in real life than it does in text. Speaking to a slab of granite isn’t exactly something I make a habit of! Still, I found myself standing there, half-expecting and hoping for some kind of response. Of course, none came. I was alone.

As I stood in the quiet, though, something happened. A wave of sentiment swept through me- not depressive sadness, but a sense of connection. Bert Anson was my uncle, after all. He was a man I’d only briefly met, but he loved history the way I do. He spent his life digging into the past, just like me. He even smoked a pipe- just like I do! Regardless of the silence, it felt like we connected for a brief moment across generations. We met. 

Maybe that’s what Memorial Day is really about: not just honoring sacrifice in uniform, but remembering those whose lives shaped ours in other ways. I wasn’t saluting a soldier as I stood at Uncle Bert’s grave. Instead, I was paying tribute to a kindred spirit. A fellow historian. A man whose legacy didn’t unfold on a battlefield, but in classrooms and conversations that rippled through my family and eventually reached me.

I departed Union Cemetery with the reminder that influence doesn’t require fanfare. Sometimes, it just takes root through stories told, books written, or a pipe-smoking great-uncle who held a newborn and passed along more than anyone could have realized.