thank a hero: wave a flag

Today dawned a typical spring day in Wyoming: absolutely freezing cold with wind-blown snow. Yesterday had been a bit better with no snow, and I’m glad for that; yesterday was the day most of our friends had turned out to honor fallen soldier Lance Corporal Jacob Ross while his body was brought home. And there we had stood, more than forty-four people on each side of the road, making a red, white, and blue archway over one lane of the road. A total of eight-eight flags had waved in the bitter wind while the motorcade slowly wound its way up the hill. We had all waited an hour and a quarter for it to arrive and were all frozen by the time it went by.

While putting up those eighty-eight flags afterwards, we had made to tell everybody we could to join us again the next day to honor Lance Corporal Ross again as his body was taken to the cemetery for burial.

That was today, and we showed up again. We did, and so did another family and a few others. That was it. A total of six flags snapped in the wind.

The motorcade rolled by. Today it traveled faster than it had yesterday, and we quickly rolled up the flags and got out of the road. One man rolled down his window and yelled a “thank you”. Several others stopped by and thanked us, too. We hadn’t done much, but it had meant a whole lot.

Later on, I learned our local National Guard section had returned home today as well. On the same day we laid to rest an American Hero, we welcomed home many more. And that is the spirit of America — show me any other country whose small towns turn out to honor one single fallen soldier, and then turns around and honors those who made it out alive in the course of a single day, and I’ll consider moving. But I don’t believe you’ll find one. That’s what makes America so great.

So today was a bittersweet day for many of us. And there will be many more. But it was also a day that we could show our true colors — those of the Red, White, and Blue.

Thank a hero today.

— Killeen Partridge