Confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson’s disease, Beckett died on 22 December 1989.
The action of consecration – which means to make holy – isn’t done by the participants of the ceremony. It is done by those who gave the ultimate sacrifice at Gettysburg, and they had done it for us, the generations of Americans who stood there on Cemetery Hill, as well as those who were not yet born.