This Memorial Day weekend, almost two dozen restaurants throughout Webster and the Greater Rochester area are joining an effort to honor and remember veterans who never made it back home.
It’s a project called “White Tables Across America.” In each participating restaurant, a single, small, empty table is tucked in an area apart from the main dining area. It’s set for one, symbolizing that someone is missing from our lives — a fallen service member, POW or MIA.
The table is covered with a white tablecloth, signifying the purity of the service member’s emotions when answering the call to serve. In addition to a normal table setting, on top of the table are placed:
- a single red rose, symbolizing the blood shed to ensure America’s freedom
- a yellow ribbon tied around the vase, representing a demand for proper accounting of those who are not with us today
- a lemon slice, reminding us of a captured soldier’s bitter fate
- a black napkin, representing the sorrow of captivity
- grains of salt on the plate, representing the countless fallen tears of families as they wait
- an inverted glass, because they can’t toast with us
- a white candle, for the hope that all our missing will return someday.
Finally, an empty chair is placed next to the table, a seat that remains unclaimed. Fully arranged, the table is a simple, yet powerful symbol of remembrance, each element representing the physical and emotional burden of a soldier’s absence.
These small memorials — also known as Fallen Comrade Tables or Missing Man Tables — can often be found at various military facilities, museums, veterans’ agencies, public events and civic spaces. Here in Rochester, though, the effort has become more organized, thanks to the efforts of Brockport resident Sarah Fisher and her five-year old son Brax…