General News: Petraeus Commits Father's Ashes at Riverfront
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| General Petraeus and his wife, Holly, later on Friday at the high school graduation. |
June 26, 2010
It was a jam-packed visit to Cornwall for General David Petraeus who arrived in his hometown on Friday, just two days after being picked by President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. military forces in Afghanistan.
Yet the four-star general found time to make his way down to the banks of the Hudson River where he and his wife, Holly, committed some of his father's ashes into the sun-dappled waters on a beautiful June afternoon. He said other portions of his ashes went to Holland, his birthplace, and to East Bangor, Pennsylvania.
In town to speak at an event honoring recipients of the Purple Heart and to address 2010 graduates at Cornwall high school, General Petraeus said he also went to Cornwall Landing to commit some of his father’s ashes to the waters where he and his father spent many happy days. Petraeus’s father, Sixtus, was a Dutch sailor who sixty years ago settled in Cornwall-on-Hudson, where his only son, David, was born in 1952. Sixtus died last year.
Petraeus said during his visit to Cornwall Landing on Friday, he recalled many happy memories, including the time spent sailing with his father. “We both had a boat,” he recalled, “I had a 19-foot boat and we would both sail out there.”
He also said that by co-incidence he ran into a former classmate, Greg Ransom, while at the riverfront, a reminder, he said, of how easy it was for him to feel at home in Cornwall-on-Hudson despite his decades of military service and travel around the world.
Comments:
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Greg's parents, Pete and Eleanor Ransom, ran Cornwall Little League for years. Another great Cornwall family.
posted by Kevin Callahan on 06/26/10 at 10:59 AM
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