This is just too weird not to share. I have been working diligently on a book titled “Memorials, Monuments, and Memories” to release it in time for Memorial Day this year.
My cover illustrator is located in another country. It was interesting trying to describe to her what the cover image should look like. About the time she finished the front cover illustration, Jill Sampson of Mill Stream Grange submitted photos of their members placing flags on veterans’ graves in Vienna, Maine (in this country).
The similarities are a little uncanny. Maybe I should have waited and used the Mill Stream Photo!
There is a bit of a Grange connection. A huge thanks to Larry Bailey of Ocean View Grange for his generous permission to use his artwork on the back cover. It’s great to “bump into” good Grangers on “Main Street America!”
Memorials, Monuments, and Memories is a collection of personal essays and reflections spanning more than a decade of Memorial Days, Veterans Days, and moments of quiet civic remembrance. Drawing on childhood memories of small-town parades, a father’s honor guard, and the family cemetery plot, author Walter Boomsma weaves together the personal and the universal — exploring what it truly means to honor the fallen, keep faith with the past, and celebrate our shared humanity. From the red poppies of Flanders Fields to a weathered “Baby” gravestone in rural Maine, these pages remind us that remembrance is not about loss — it is about love, legacy, and the living obligation we carry forward.
The book is on sale! Ordering information is available here.