Yesterday the nation celebrated Memorial Day. The day when we pay our respects to and remember the sacrifices of all of those men and women who have given their lives to keep America a free country.

Unfortunately, many of our citizens who were born after World War II have no appreciation of those sacrifices and choose to focus on the stumbles and mistakes of the United States instead of the successes. They seem to think that we live in one of the worst countries in the world. I’ve been in other countries and believe me, none compares with the United States.

forestgroveflagA new memorial flag was flown yesterday here in Forest Grove. It is large, 30′ X 60′ atop a 120′ flag pole. It is beautiful but many people complained that it was vulgar and excessive. How can any show of patriotism be excessive?

Even as a younster I can remember getting choked up seeing the flags waving along the street where volunteers had placed them on the parade routes.

Souza’s Stars And Stripes Forever can still cloud my vision. Who can remain sitting when the National Anthem is played or sung?

We fly our small 3′ X 5′ American flag on the front of our home on holidays and also have two other flags that we don’t fly. They were flown over the nation’s capitol building and mean too much to me to put out in the weather.  Crazy, I know. A flag is meant for display, not for hiding in the closet!

This sort fo reminds me of my grandmother Zeiler. Mom and here sisters often sent her new linens at Christmas and other occasions. I noticed these in one of her dresser drawers one summer and asked why she never used them and she said they were too nice to use. I guess I can start to understand that a little now.

I served in the Navy in the 1950′s on the USS Holmes County (LST-836) which was home-based in San Diego. We made several trips to Japan, China and the Phillipines with many stops in between. Visiting foreign countries was a great experience but everyone was glad to get home again to the good old US of A. We returned one time from Japan to the Oakland shipyards for an overhaul and when we passed under the Golden Gate there wasn’t a dry eye on anyone on the weather decks.

Ask anyone who served in the military and I doubt if anyone would say the new Forest Grove flag is too big.

I know that patriotism is not totally dead and that there are many people who appreciate the sacrifices made by current as well as past service personnel. Several weeks ago I was in a store and a woman in her 40′s came up behind me and said “Thank you for serving”.

I had to stop and ask her what she had said because I wasn’t sure what she meant. She said she wanted to thank me for serving in the Navy. It was then that the light dawned. I was wearing my American Legion ball cap with a strap cover in back that said “U.S. Navy”.

Her show of honest “thanks” was wonderful to hear and made me realize that this is still the greatest country on earth even if some of our citizens feel we get carried away with the size of our flags.