We went to Monona again this year for the Memorial Day Parade. 

Last year, our granddaughter, Elsie, marched in the parade with the Monona Grove High School band, playing her trombone. We were very proud. 

This year she was chosen for the honor of twirling one of the band’s decorative flags, so she donned a special outfit and left the trombone at home. She was not carrying our nation’s colors, you understand—just one of several blue-and-white flags that decorate the band’s arrival as it marches down Monona Drive. She marches ahead of the instrumental players and twirls the flag in a decorative display. We were very proud. 

This parade is not one of the solemn events of Memorial Day. It’s more like a celebration of community spirit. It starts with a color guard carrying the U.S. and Wisconsin flags. Then everyone in Monona, except spectators, marches or walks down Monona Drive. Many sprinkle items of candy upon the bystanders. Some of them drive old-fashioned cars or huge trucks with elaborate paint jobs. There is a gentleman dressed as Uncle Sam who zips up and down the street on a penny-farthing bicycle. It’s all very grand, and happy.

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Memorial Day—the Monday observance of the official Memorial Day—is the culmination, here in the Madison area, of a long weekend of food indulgence at The World’s Largest Brat Fest. The event, held on Willow Island near the Memorial Coloseum, features bratwurst sandwiches of all possible descriptions served to enthusiastic consumers in the name of hundreds of worthy charities. It starts on Friday morning with Take Your Brat to Work Day, your annual opportunity to zoom through a quick bratwurst pickup lane and bring a few thousand calories of warm sausages with you to your office, and it ends on Sunday night or whenever the brats run out.

It, too, is a celebration of some kind.

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Veterans—in uniform and with U.S. flags—are integral to both the parade and the brat fest. They show up everywhere, usually being thanked for their service.

As a Vietnam veteran of the U.S. Air Force, I find myself charmed and gratified whenever our fellow citizens thank us for our service. But thoughtful veterans may reflect that not all of us came home to enjoy the blessings of liberty, to chomp the bratwurst, to march in the parade.

Some paid in blood. Some paid the ultimate price. Some laid their lives as a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Memorial Day is about them, about their loss of life, about our loss of their continuing company. It is, on that account, a day of rue and woe.

I think of my uncles, Stanley and Franklin Sommers, both bomber pilots, both shot down in flames before I was even born. I feel like I know them, even though I never met them.

I remember Bill Harff, my buddy from the Rattlesnake Patrol in Boy Scout Troop 27, Kenosha, Wisconsin. Billy died of fragmentation wounds near Polei Kleng Airfield in Vietnam in 1968, hit by fragments from a mortar round that burst in the air above him. But I recall him alive and vibrant, pounding tent pegs at a campground or playing a rough-and-tumble Scout game called “British Bulldog.” 

I remember Ryan Jopek, the hale, cheery 20-year-old son of my friend Brian. I photographed them, father and son together, before Ryan went off to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2006. He was killed by an improvised explosive device in Tikrit. I know his father feels the loss every day.

There are almost too many to count, yet each one is counted by somebody. Every death is personal to someone. Through blunders of policy or failures of execution, our nation can waste young lives in fruitless battle. Yet those who died in vain cannot be less honored than those who won some clear, unarguable victory. 

They are all ours, they gave their all for us, and the least we can do is remember.

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Don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader. I love my granddaughter, and she looks great in a majorette outfit, twirling a flag. 

For the record, I like brats as well as the next man, maybe even better. 

But we who remember the honored dead ought to say something about their sacrifice, at least once a year.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer