In Memory

Chalk it up to age, nostalgia – or the current condition of our country. But when I woke up today, I wasn’t thinking of a day free from work. I was thinking of Rogers Leuallen Crawford, the uncle I never met. His dreams ended March 5, 1945, on Iwo Jima – 10 days after the American flag was raised on Mount Suribachi. He was 22.

To me, Uncle Rogers was a fresh-faced young man playing dress up in a Marine uniform and smiling cockily at the world from a cheap 8x10 frame center stage on Grandma’s dresser. The fact that his picture, draped with two purple hearts, was in Grandma’s bedroom spoke volumes. All the other family pictures were in the living room – to be shared with anyone who dropped by. But Rogers was a quiet, closely held loss. His picture was the first and last thing she saw every day.

Unlike many mothers, Grandma knew the horrible details of Rogers’ death. She had three other sons fighting in the war, and the oldest watched, helplessly, when his brother's foxhole was hit with a grenade. While she didn’t let herself dwell on it, Grandma sometimes wondered what Rogers would have accomplished had he lived. Most likely, something mechanical, she said. He was the fix-it guy of the Crawford clan. When she thought of him in the Marines, Grandma always pictured him working on a bicycle – one of his duties when his unit wasn’t fighting.

Rogers was one of 6,821 U.S. troops to die in a little more than a month at Iwo Jima. But when we think of Iwo Jima, we too often focus on the flag-raising without giving much thought to the sacrifice made by these men and their families, of the dreams that were snuffed out, of the future that would never be.

As we observe Memorial Day, let’s not just pay lip service to the lives lost. Rather, let’s make a commitment to their memory – and to the troops serving today – that we will ensure their sacrifices were not in vain, that we will maintain the values they fought for, that we will do our part to make our nation deserving of their service.