What a busy week it has been. I am just now getting around to posting a blog I wrote on Monday, July 28, 2025.
/
Another chapter closes in the story of Mingo Sanders. I love telling his story because it is about dreams, adversity, and adventure. He was born a slave, grew up during the Civil War, worked the fields, worked on the railroad, and joined the Army as soon as he could. Sent to the western territories, protected pioneers and settlers, grew into a leader of soldiers, led an expedition on newly invented bicycles rather than horseback, fought in the Spanish American Wars, and fought for the civil rights of the segregated men of his unit. For so long his story has been a tragedy but now I feel it has become a comedy. After receiving notification that Arlington National Cemetery would correct his grave marker it was on me to see if it had been done, no further notification would be given. I went to check.
/
It was a fitting day, National Buffalo Soldier Day, sunny and hot. I found his and his wife Luella’s grave marker gleaming in the sun with his rank of First Sergeant engraved in the newly cut marble. It is perfect. Almost as if it had always been that way.
/
We had to go through the process of telling the story, building interest, doing research, obtaining the facts, publishing our findings, and petitioning for changes to be made so that his dignity may be restored. When I say we I mean Mingo, Luella, and Me. They did the heavy lifting long ago. I just spotted him and followed through. Now it’s time to restore his dignity with a public ceremony, and there will be more to come on that as I explore the process.
/
Nothing in this world is perfect but we strive for perfection and looking around Arlington you can find countless examples. Here at First Sergeant Mingo Sanders grave you see how they corrected his rank from Sergeant to First Sergeant, but you don’t see a date for when he was born, only the day he died on August 23, 1929. He was buried here three days later on the 26th not long after another black soldier. This entire section is in fact filled with black soldiers.
/
Walking through Section 25 to First Sergeant Sanders grave marker you may notice the boldened letters of one particular grave marker for a World War I Medal of Honor winner, that of Private Henry Johnson. On the night of May 15, 1918, while armed with a box of grenades, a rifle, and a knife, he held off the attack of a German raiding party alone while his buddy ran for help. His buddy returned wounded and was about to be taken prisoner. Johnson having expended all grenades, ammo, and clubbing the enemy with his rifle until he could no longer, he resorted to using a bolo knife. His ferocity in defense of his buddy gave the Germans a chance to reconsider what lie ahead for them if they pressed the attack so they retreated. Almost 100 years later on June 2, 2015, President Barak Obama posthumously presented the highest U.S. military award, the Medal of Honor, to Private Johnson. Not perfect, but we strive, Johnson died on July 1, 1929, in Washington, DC with little wealth or fame, except for being the first US soldier to receive the Croix de guerre with star and bronze palm. The French had taken notice, having integrated their army, but a couple headlines in the newspapers bestowing him with the nickname “black death” was all that could be afford a black soldier in the segregated US Army of those days.
/
I look at Private Johnson’s grave, a stone’s throw from First Sergeant Sanders, and see how one generations example of fighting to liberate the Cubans from the Spanish while being oppressed at home in America, inspired the generation that came after them to keep striving for perfection. If you stopped by the Tomb of the Unknowns, on your way, and saw the changing of the guard with the precision of their movements, if heard the prayers of a military chaplain over the rows and rows of perfectly spaced graves, or if you were lucky enough to witness the close coordination of a military flyover, maybe you considered some aspect of your life where you could strive for perfection?
/
We never are truly perfect, but we are always respectful. The preamble to the Constitution expresses that desire to form a more perfect union as a charter to our form of government of self-rule. We progress, not digress, never perfect but always respectful, to that more perfect union.
/
Acknowledging our imperfections focuses a respectful mind. I remember my first deployment to Afghanistan as a flight operations specialist. We worked on the airfield and whenever a casualty would be flown out for their last trip home we would hold a ramp ceremony for them. Along the airport taxiway ramp where the plane waited, soldiers who volunteered after working 12-hour shifts were lined up waiting to represent their various NATO units and saluted the caskets as they were carried up into the plane. Never perfect, always respectful, was the mantra we carried in our hearts as we lifted them out of the MRAP’s and gently laid them under the care of the crew chief to secure.
/
It is good to strive for perfection because we move closer to God and make the world closer to heaven. That is to say a love in a place that has always been and always will be. Maybe that’s why the new grave marker looked as if it had always been there? We have moved our world closer, with love, to perfection.