Uncle Phil Memorial

It's Memorial Day again when we remember the sacrifices made by those who lost their lives in battle in service to their country or whatever.

File my uncle Phil under whatever. He lost his life at the Battle of Little Big Horn. America wasn't really his home. He came from Ireland and got involved in the Civil War without a true dog in the fight. Legend says that he spent time on both sides, recruited with the promise of some boots and some booze. When the going got tough, Phil got going.

Eventually, with nothing better to do, he joined up with Custer. Bad decision.

He was at the Little Big Horn where he was slaughtered and mutilated along with Custer and 278 other guys, not that they didn't ask for it with their own manifest destiny savage genocidal aggression. I imagine he was one of those guys standing near Custer when the arrows started to fall wondering WTF and a half hour later, he was scalpless history.

Or was he?

Seems that my father became an expert on Custer. In doing his research, he discovered that a man named Phil Ryan was counted among the losses. My Dad made the great leap of faith and began touting the legend of Uncle Phil. He located a picture of some of the guys under Custer's command and decided that one of the guys looked something like me. That was good enough for him

When my father bought his future gravesite in Lima, New York near the resting place of his mother and father and future resting place of my mother, he thought it would be a nice gesture to add a tribute for "Uncle" Phil. He undertook a campaign to have Phil honored with a grave marker in the family plot. He wrote letters to the War Department, the Department of the Interior, the President, the Congressman and God knows who else.

Somehow, somebody listened. 

We were sent a marker commemorating Phil which we placed near the future resting place of my Mom and Dad.

My father got a big kick out of this.

Every time we visit the gravesite of my parents and grandparents, we also visit the Phil Ryan marker and remember how much fun my Dad had procuring it and how proud he was of obtaining it.

Phil has got to be one of the few Last Stand guys commemorated in upstate New York.

If you ever visit the Lima cemetery check 'em out.