Memorial Day

Several weeks ago my son's Boy Scout troop was involved in a 'small' project. I wrote a little something on it but decided to hold till today.......

Yesterday we woke early and headed down to Oaklawn Memorial cemetery to help a Scout from our Troop on his Eagle Project. For the past few years our town has had a Healing Field set up for Memorial Day. For those of you not in the know the Healing Field is a patch of land where a full sized US Flag is placed for each Service Man and Woman who has given the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this country during the War on Terroism. This year our Life Scout was going to place a yellow ribbon on each flag, each ribbon would contain the name, rank, service and place and time of death of each person. Also included was a little something about that person if the family had responded to the letter our Scout sent out for each ribbon he was making. Our job that day was to assist in the building of the healing field. A rebar post was planted every 2 ft for 20 posts per row (105 rows). We then paired two Scouts and later brothers, sister, mothers and fathers, one carried a flag and the other a ribbon. The flag carrier stopped and placed the flag on the rebar post, the ribbon carrier then tied the ribbon to the flag and then read the ribbon, the Scouts saluted then went back in line to take another flag and ribbon. This went on for several hours and when finished 1805 flags and ribbons were in place. 1,805 men and women who died in service of their country were now represented. A few local family members showed up to help and were able to plant the flag of their loved ones and one of our own Scouts was given the Ribbon of his cousin who had passed a little over a year ago in Iraq. It was long, tiring, emotional work and as we drove home my son was sitting in the back of the car and started to cry. It was too much for him, he and several scouts for his patrol took a flag or ribbon down every row. He saluted and honored over 100 dead and that was a little too much death for a 12 year old who has both parents, 3 sets of Grandparents, 2 sets of Great Grand Parents and the same dog since he can remember. He understood what each flag represented and was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the field when we were done.

Today we went to a ceremony at the Healing Field to honor our war dead and my son was interviewed by a local TV station (OK mine) and his sound byte was used in a package about the service.....

On this Memorial Day as we honor the dead and celebrate the fact that their sacrifice enables us to live in a safe, free country I leave you words of wisdom from my 12 year old....

"It is just wrong that all these people had to die and it makes me very sad but they were also doing their job to protect us and we have to honor them and it makes you proud."