Title: Honoring our forgotten warriors on Veterans Day
Original CoS Document (slug): honoring-our-forgotten-heroes
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Created: 2018-10-31 09:15:48
Updated: 2022-02-15 18:20:24
Published: 2018-11-09 00:00:00
Converted: 2025-04-14T21:01:31.195128866
Veterans Day is fast approaching.
Parades honoring our heroes, living and passed, will wind their way along our streets. Children will wave American flags and cheer as men and women in uniform pass by, sometimes pointing to a familiar face.
Reds, whites, and blues color the theme of the day, while the somber black and white of the POW flags are carried with reverence by their brothers and sisters at arms.
But I have never seen these processions personally, because I have a more important job to do.
Each Veterans Day, I go first to honor my father, a Korean War vet, at the family grave. From there, I then proceed to the many other cemeteries tucked away in various parts of my city for the men and women who gave their lives in the many wars of our nation.
How do I accomplish such a great task? How does one person make a difference? How does one person show they care? For me, it's by weeding and cleaning the graves of the Forgotten Warriors.
Most cemeteries have maintenance crews that do this for the “perpetual care” stickered graves but not for those who have no one left. That is my job.
Too many of our fallen heroes lie in tangled, forgotten graves. There are even Civil War graves here that are left unattended.
It is not only a shame but a tragedy that these fallen heroes, who gave their lives so that we can live under Freedom's embrace, should lie in such disturbing slumber.
So, every year on Veterans Day, I go to these forgotten places. I pull the weeds from the ground. I remove the dirt from the markers. I clean the trash left behind by others.
Why do this? Simple. There is no one else.
National military cemeteries have crews of workers to maintain their sites. The recently fallen have families and friends. But those who have no family, those souls not in Arlington and other places of honor, have only myself.
There is no paycheck at the end of the day, no crowds cheering me, and no “Thank you” for doing this. What I receive from this service is the knowledge that the past will live on, and our fallen heroes will be remembered and honored, at least for one more year.
That is worth more to me than anything else.
So maybe next year, as the parades roll down the streets of your cities and towns, you can take a few minutes to join me.
Stop by a cemetery and find an old warrior's grave. Pull up the weeds, brush off the marker, and, most importantly, remember the name.