It is perhaps the nature of silence that it often goes unnoticed, and so it was this year when, for the first time since a 2016 law was signed requiring presidents to do so, all Americans were called to observe two minutes of silence in honor of the nation’s veterans.
Those two minutes come about following the efforts of at least three congressmen and twelve years of lobbying by the family of Dr. Peter Bendetson, a Brookline dermatologist, to make it the law that the President calls for a moment of silence each November 11.
The idea started with a vacation, part of an ongoing family tradition to travel during spring break.
“We ended up in Israel on the day that they remembered their soldiers and we were out on the street in the morning. They blew a siren and — it was awesome — people stopped. Everyone. People got out of their cars, stopped walking and just stood silently for some time,” Bendetson said. “My son Daniel looked at me and said ‘Dad, that was amazing, why can’t we do something like this?’”
Daniel got to work when they got home, his dad said.
“Everybody kind of laughed at him, saying Daniel, this is a good idea, but in the United States it will never happen,” he said.
At first no one would listen.
“Then we heard Rep. Barney Frank would meet with anyone from his district, anyone, but we weren’t from his district,” Bendetson said. “So we found a veteran who was.”
Frank did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
The bill was a great idea, Frank told Daniel Bendetson, he said. Then Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown signed on as a co-sponsor. The Bendetsons went to Washington D.C. to lobby for the law, the first of dozens of trips.
“What we found was pretty incredible. Democrat, Republican, Independent, it didn’t matter what the party was, we found support across the aisle,” Daniel Bendetson told the Herald.
Even so, congress is congress and the first bill never saw a vote. Frank retired.
“We were surprised it didn’t make it through that first time, with all the support we found, but we were persistent,” Daniel Bendetson said.
U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch took up the torch, according to the Bendetsons.
“This man went out of his way to do this for the veterans. He went on the house floor advocating for this bill – he got it through. He’s amazing,” Peter Bendetson said of Lynch.
Even with the bill passed and signed by then-President Barack Obama, when the next year passed and Veterans Day came no call to silence was issued by former President Donald Trump. Another year passed, then another and another.
“Trump ignored the law,” U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss told the Herald. “It was my responsibility to make sure the law was enacted.”
Auchincloss, himself a veteran, lobbied with the White House to have Biden follow the law on the books.
Without any fanfare or much press, this year, Biden did so.
“I encourage all Americans to recognize the valor, courage, and sacrifice of these patriots through appropriate ceremonies and private prayers, and by observing two minutes of silence for our Nation’s veterans,” the president declared on Veterans Day this year.
The Bendetsons hope the moment of silence allows people to set aside their political differences and agree on something: support for our nation’s veterans.
“It all goes back to the core message for us – just really paying our respects,” Daniel Bendetson said.