The Clarke County (Alabama) War Memorial: Kairos and Chronos United in the Sacred Commemoration and Contemplation of Five Wars

"Greater love has no one than this; that one lay down their life for their friends" - John 15:13 As we contemplate the laying down of one's life-for family, for friends, for country, for ideals-the ideal of freedom strikes a responsive chord for Americans. It is ingrained in our collective psyche and supported by our nation's founding documents. The United States of America's Declaration of Independence confirms our commitment to that ideal: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (The Declaration, par. 2). Because we place such a high value on freedom for ourselves, we are willing to extend that unalienable right to others, whether on our own continent or elsewhere in the world-and that course of action can lead to military conflict. When the conflict ends, those who have given the ultimate sacrifice of life to maintain the principle of freedom are usually honored publicly in some commemorative fashion. The focus of this article is to illustrate how one Alabama county memorialized its honored dead from not one, but from five wars: the Civil War, World War I, World War , the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Giving Voice to Place Beiden C. Lane states: "A curious transformation of consciousness occurs when 'an ordinary place' ... - a mere dot on the map-becomes gradually (or perhaps even suddenly) a place of extraordinary significance" (53). This transformation from a mere neutral location (topos) to one suggestive of energizing forces and imagination (chora) has been debated since the time of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle considered "place" (topos) as an "inert container," as a point of no significant influence on the human beings who inhabited it (Lane 54; Aristotle 59-60). On the other hand, Plato proposed "place" (chora) to be "the wetnurse, suckler, and feeder of all things," which finds its center in common human experience and calls human beings to a "common dance" or "'choreography' most appropriate to their life together" (Lane 54; Aristotle 59-60; Plato, 48, 51). Lane further intimates that when individuals experience the "common dance" in deliberate ritual activity, such as commemorating human events, it is the common involvement in the ritual activity that transforms a place from topos to chora for the participants (54). In that mutual experience, the place becomes sacred, offering an opportunity for reflection and connection to things present and past. That shared experience is linked to a Greek word for "time": kairos. In contrast to another Greek word for "time" -chronos, which corresponds to the passage of repetitive equal divisions of time, such as minutes -kairos indicates an "unrepeatable moment when events of great significance come to be gathered in the life of an individual or people" (55). In the instance of experiencing a public memorial, it is a rare opportunity to experience both kairos and chronos simultaneously-connected across time (55). The conflict in the experience, however, often arises from the conception of the public memorial's form. Public Memorials In his article, "Monument and Memory in a Postmodern Age," Andreas Huyssen indicates that "remembrance as a vital human activity shapes our links to the past, and the ways we remember define us in the present. As individuals and societies, we need the past to construct and to anchor our identities and to nurture a vision of the future" (qtd. in CaIo, par. 3; Huyssen 249-61). No contemplation of the American past can exclude the Revolutionary War, because it united a group of unlikely individuals who formed a nation committed to freedom and justice for all of its citizenry. Nor can the Civil War be excluded, because it ripped our nation apart as we dealt with the issue that all were not free. The conflict caused our nation to reconsider its priorities and to build anew the American identity, inclusive of all freedom-loving people. …