Our View: A day to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice

There is nothing more solemn than the folding of the flag during the funeral of a fallen soldier. Each of the 13 folds has meaning and words that accompany it. It must not be hurried, it cannot be taken lightly.

Folding the flag is a farewell due anyone who has served our nation. Folding the flag for someone who has fallen while doing their duty is a final tribute to that person’s devotion.

We set aside Memorial Day each year to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can live as a free people. We recognize their devotion by decorating their graves, making speeches, dropping flowers into rivers and the playing of Taps.

And since at least 1868, in Ironton, Ohio, our nation has also often celebrated with a parade. If that seems incongruous, it’s not. Originally, people marched in honor of those who had not returned the Civil War, the bloodiest of all our wars with the most widespread death and grief. They marched to remember those they had lost.

But parades have a way of lightening the burden of grief. As we parade in remembrance of sacrifice, we also celebrate what their sacrifice has gained. It’s not a stretch to say that each person who has fallen in battle – at Bunker Hill, at Gettysburg, at Amiens, on the Coral Sea, on Guadalcanal, at Porkchop Hill, Khe Sanh and in Anbar Province – died to keep us free. We celebrate that freedom as we recall that without their ultimate sacrifices, nothing we enjoy would be possible. Nothing.

This particular Memorial Day comes on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 40th anniversary of the end of our involvement in Vietnam.

Many of those who fell in those wars are buried in Arlington Cemetery. In all, the cemetery has 260,000 graves and 7,300 niches for cremated remains. Each has a flag today, placed there by soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as the Old Guard.

These could be the same soldiers asked to answer the next great challenge to our way of life. Eastern Europe is a mess, the Islamic State is trying to ignite a broader war in the most dangerous place on the planet and North Korea flaunts its missiles to threaten peaceful neighbors whom we have promised to defend.

Staring into the faces of these threats are our soldiers, sailors, and pilots. They stand guard, at the edge of the abyss, every day. Some of them, no doubt, will eventually be called upon to make that ultimate sacrifice.

If that happens, they will return to us in metal coffins, draped in an American flag. At the end of the funeral ceremony, that flag will be carefully folded into a triangle, words spoken at every fold.

Many of those flags find places of honor in our homes, reminders of the sacrifice our kin have made.

Remember the fallen.

This story was originally published May 24, 2015 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Our View: A day to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice."