05/25/2026
I attended my first funeral when I was five years old. It was a graveside service for a distant cousin, one of the earliest casualties of the Korean War.
The experience was both bewildering and terrifying. Bewildering because I was too young to understand why so many people were crying or why a flag was draped over some kind of box up. I thought it should be flying from a flagpole.
Terrifying because of the gun salute near the end of the service. I was unprepared for it. Perhaps the terror of that moment is why so many details of the day remain etched in my memory.
As this Memorial Day weekend approached, I began to reflect on what might have motivated Dad insisted to take me to that funeral. I will never know, because we never discussed it later in life.
I can only conclude that he wanted to impress on me, even at a tender age, that the defense of freedom exacts a telling toll on life.
When it came to military service, Dad was part of what might be termed a “lucky generation.” He had been too young to serve in the First World War and was well-beyond draft age by the time of the Second World War.
But only weeks after Pearl Harbor, driven by patriotism at age 34, he enlisted in the Navy. He was nearly twice the age of every other man in his recruit class.
Apart from my brother, that unfortunate cousin, and me, Dad was the only member of his large extended family to serve in uniform during the twentieth century.
Because of his age, the Navy opted not to send him to the combat zone. Instead, he was assigned to the crash crew at a new naval station where hundreds of young pilots were being rushed through flight school.
Unfortunately, many of them died in training accidents. His job included gathering the remains of the pilot from the wreckage and carefully documenting where each part was found. Such gruesome duty left him with psychological and emotional scars for life.
On Memorial Day, we honor the heroism of those who died in the line of duty. It’s a somber, yet vital remembrance.
But in honoring the men and women who sacrificed physical life in defense of our country, let us not forget those who sacrificed mental and psychological health in that same defense.
My terror at that graveside funeral was only momentary. But for many of them, the terror is ever-recurring. They routinely revisit it in nightmares.
Fifteen years after that first funeral, I was on active duty in the Navy myself. Ironically, one of my collateral duties was to lead the honor guard that rendered gun salutes at military burials.
The service of our squad was in steady demand, because America was at the height of the Vietnam War.
After all these years, images of those graveside ceremonies are still fresh in memory. Yet, I never knew any of those young men to whom we paid a final tribute. I never looked them in the eye.
But I’ve looked into the eyes of countless acquaintances who, like my Dad, survived war physically, but were never the same emotionally, psychologically, or even spiritually.
I’ve now lived long enough to lose many a friend to war, especially during my 35 years of active duty and naval reserve service. Today, they are all in my thoughts.
At the same time, I’m also remembering friends who have borne the psychological scars of war for a lifetime. They, too, deserve our nation’s utmost honor and respect.
