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SARAH J. GLOVER / Staff Photographer
The wreath placed by a group of 40 ROTC cadets from Villanova and the University of Pennsylvania to celebrate the Marine Corps founding day at the the Arch Street Friends Meeting in Philadelphia.
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At dawn in Phila., homage to the first Marine
Once a year, few are the proud who remember:
The Philadelphian who founded of the Marines is buried here.
Every Nov. 10 for perhaps two decades, a simple sunrise ceremony has taken place at the unlikely site where Samuel Nicholas is buried:
The Quaker meetinghouse at Fourth and Arch Streets.
It's an obscure ritual at a hardly noticed resting place - an almost-unknown tomb of a well-known soldier - partly because no gravestone marks the spot and no sign or engraving commemorates his life.
The Society of Friends, renowned for its pacificism, has preferred to keep the matter quiet.
About 6:40 a.m., hearty chanting heralded the approach of a contingent of men and women.
"Back in 1775, our Marine Corps came alive!" was one of the lines they bellowed.
So was, "It's freezing out."
The cadence grew louder, as about 48 souls, most of them in sweatsuits, jogged double-file through the Arch Street gates, one block west of the Betsy Ross House.
"Halt!"
Soon they were standing silently, on a herringbone brick walkway west of the long two-story brick building, under a semi-skeletal canopy of towering trees.
A reading commemorated the life of the Marine Corps' first commandant, authorized to recruit the first battalions by the Continental Congress 233 years ago on this date. Leading the Marines during the Revolutionary War, Major Nicholas launched a successful assault on British forces in the Bahamas and ferried Gen. George Washington across the Delaware River for the famous Battle of Trenton.
That the observance falls on the day before Veterans Day is mere coincidence.
A wreath with red and white carnations and a red bow was placed upon a wire stand, followed by a minute or more of silence.
Then the group was off, except for Capt. Phillip Peche, 31, who stayed behind to explain.
The 48 paying homage - who ran 3.5 or so miles from the University of Pennsylvania - included about 40 ROTC cadets from Penn and Villanova, as well as three second lieutenants and a gunnery sergeant from Quantico, Va.
The ROTC program he helps manage, he said, is officially a Navy program, but cadets can opt to join the Marines.
"I think it's great to introduce the newest members of the corps to the history," he said.
The precise whereabouts of Nicholas' remains are a mystery, he said.
