This post is to explain how important yesterday's post is to so many.
This is from the Boston Globe...
KEVIN CULLEN
Leaving an empty seat in tribute
to POWs and MIAs
By Kevin Cullen
| GLOBE COLUMNIST
NOVEMBER 06, 2012
On this, the most partisan day of the year, here’s an idea we can all get behind.
A few years ago, Joe D’Entremont saw an empty seat at a racetrack in Bristol, Tenn. It
was left empty on purpose, a symbolic way to remember the 92,000 American service
members who since World War I went missing in action or were prisoners of war who
didn’t make it home.
D’Entremont — president of the Massachusetts chapter of Rolling Thunder, a group
dedicated to making the government accountable for POWs and MIAs, looked at the
empty seat in Tennessee and said, “Why not here?”
But you have to walk before you can run. D’Entremont noticed that the color guard that
marched onto the field at Gillette Stadium during Patriots games didn’t include a
POW/MIA flag. So he called up the Patriots and offered them a flag, and they readily
agreed. That flag is out there at every game now. The Red Sox started flying a POW/MIA
flag at Fenway Park. It took a little longer to get one up at TD Garden, where the Bruins
and Celtics play, but eventually goodwill prevailed. If you look around, there are
POW/MIA flags at a lot of public events now. Thank you, Rolling Thunder.
Still, D’Entremont kept thinking about that empty seat in Tennessee, so he went back to
the sports teams and asked them to give up a seat.
The Lowell Spinners, the minor league baseball team, were the first to sign on. In June,
they dedicated a single black chair in Section 104 of LeLacheur Park that will remain
empty forever.
D’Entremont was grateful, but he went looking for a bigger venue. On Friday, the
Patriots will unveil a seat that will be kept empty at Gillette on Sunday, Veterans Day,
and every day after that.
There’s more. D’Entremont’s buddy, Dennis Moschella, president of Veterans Assisting
Veterans, got talking last summer to John MacDonald, the vice president of corporate
strategy for Lupoli Cos., about the idea of putting up POW/MIA tables in restaurants.
MacDonald is an Air Force veteran, and he turned to his boss, Sal Lupoli, and in no time
at all, Lupoli said, “Let’s do it.”
“Joe D’Entremont told us he’s had trouble persuading restaurants to do this,”
MacDonald said. “Sal jumped in with both feet.”
A couple of weeks ago, they unveiled a table with an empty seat at Salvatore’s, Lupoli’s
restaurant in Lawrence, and 300 people showed up. Lupoli wants to leave an empty seat
in each of his five restaurants and his 40 pizza shops. Eventually it will get done. And if
you don’t think it will happen in all those locations, you don’t know Sal Lupoli.
D’Entremont is hoping for momentum. What the Patriots are doing this week sets an
example for the Red Sox and the people who run the Garden. Sal Lupoli has set the bar
for restaurants.
D’Entremont is a Jamaica Plain guy, and when he went to his local, the venerable
Doyle’s Cafe, Gerry Burke Jr. agreed to keep an empty table throughout the Veterans
Day weekend.
What if every bar in Boston, in Massachusetts, in New England left an empty seat or
table?
From that empty seat at the racetrack in Tennessee, Joe D’Entremont is trying to think
beyond stadiums and restaurants and bars.
He’s thinking all sorts of public places, places where people go and people talk, where
parents talk to their kids. Parks. Schools. Beaches.
“Think about the conversations,” D’Entremont said. “I’d bet that most Americans
wouldn’t have any idea that 92,000 service members were POWs or MIAs who never
made it home from the wars of the last century. Think about parents talking to their kids
about the empty seat. Guys were left behind. They can’t speak for themselves, so we
have to speak for them.”
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. Follow him
on Twitter @GlobeCullen.
It's so important to always remember.
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