Ever since I became a Scout leader I wanted a flagpole so our family could raise and lower a flag in our front yard. Specifically, I wanted us to be able to participate in our nation’s annual tribute to its fallen by flying the flag at half-staff on Memorial Day. So, shortly before Memorial Day in 2001, we purchased a flagpole and installed it on our front lawn. On Memorial Day that year we felt greater reverence for our country’s honored dead as we performed this small ceremony at home for the first time.
A little over 3 months later we watched the TV in horror as the second plane flew into the World Trade Center in New York City. I quietly went outside and lowered our flag to half-staff, and then my family gathered together to pray for our country and our brothers and sisters in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. We felt solidarity with our fellow citizens as flags came out across the nation to acknowledge the terrible loss and express our resolve that this outrage would not go unanswered. We were all changed by that September day.
In February of 2002 I was given the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong desire to visit Washington D.C. and took some time to visit Arlington National Cemetery. I felt a solemn reverence come over me as I walked to the Tomb of the Unknowns. As I looked out over the silent, snow-covered landscape, I was impressed by the awful arithmetic of freedom – conveyed by row after row of pure white headstones stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions. I left with a resolve to never take my freedom for granted, and have strived to live up to that inner commitment in the years that followed. Memorial Day after visiting Arlington was different for me. I had seen some of the price of my freedom quantified, and it changed me.
At the end of last year I went on a business trip to Baltimore, and took the time to drive to Gettysburg and spend the day touring the battlefield. I have read multiple volumes on the Civil War, and countless chapters in those books are devoted to the battle at Gettysburg. I thought I had an idea of what to expect there – but I was unprepared for the emotions I felt. The size of the battlefield, the sweltering heat, the marches and countermarches, the ferocity of the fighting and the sheer numbers of soldiers who fought and died all over that ground were almost incomprehensible. Words fail me. Even now, words fail me as I remember that day.
Later that afternoon, I toured Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Although I felt a reverence there, I was still so overwhelmed by what I had felt at Gettysburg that I didn’t fully appreciate where I was walking. The next day I went back to Fort McHenry to briefly fly a flag over the Fort that I could take home with me. On the second visit, I felt what I was expecting to feel in that hallowed place. I marveled at the tenacity of Fort McHenry’s defenders as they endured the unremitting bombardment of the mightiest military in the world at the time. I was grateful for the patriotic defiance they demonstrated as they raised a larger flag the following morning so the whole world could see “that our flag was still there.” I was inspired, and the flag I brought home with me is a precious reminder of what I felt there. My storehouse of gratitude for the sacrifice of others grew. I was changed by what I felt there. I will remember the feelings from that trip as we observe Memorial Day this year.
In spite of how these visits and these experiences have increased my feelings of gratitude for my freedom, they pale in comparison to the experience that lives with our family every day.
On March 12, 2010 my dad called to let me know that my cousin, SFC Jake Whetten, had been killed by an IED in Afghanistan earlier that day. When I hung up the phone I immediately walked out of my house and lowered the flag in our front yard to half-staff to honor Jake and the ultimate sacrifice he had just made. The next few days were full of emotion as we gathered with Jake’s family to receive his body at Luke AFB and then participate in his funeral services – complete with the full military honors due to one who has lost his life in combat. Jake’s mother, Aunt Amy, requested that my siblings and I sing America The Beautiful at his funeral. Somehow we all made it through the song without breaking down, but in the past 10 years I have never been able to sing the third verse of that beautiful song without breaking down and crying:
Oh, beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
Our family was changed by Jake’s sacrifice, and Memorial Day that year took on a meaning that was orders of magnitude deeper than it was for us only the year before. Memorial Day in 2010 – ten years ago – and every Memorial Day since then has been different, because we were all changed by Jake’s sacrifice. We saw, firsthand, the indescribable grief felt by Jake’s daughter, his mother, his brother and sisters, his fiancé, and all of the members of his extended family who gathered to honor him that day. We felt overwhelming sorrow ourselves at all that was lost when Jake was killed. The Hall of Heroes is no longer an anonymous and faceless concept to us. It now contains someone we knew and loved and respected – someone we watched grow up. We came face-to-face with the true cost of freedom, and how that price is not only extracted through the life of the soldier that is lost, but in the grief and loneliness and sorrow and regret that is left behind in its wake. The price is borne by those left behind who carry the heavy burden of an unwanted honor.
God bless them, and the memory of their loved ones! May the “peace that passeth all understanding” be theirs as we all reflect on their sacrifice this weekend!
