Interlude: Mount Rushmore, Colors Ceremony

After our visit to Mount Rushmore in the day, we heard of the evening lighting service, and decided to return for that, a half hour drive from our campground. The sun went down behind the president, twilight came, and then a ranger walked out on the stage of the amphitheatre. To her right is the American flag, illuminate by a floodlight. Behind are the dusk-shadowed faces of four American icons: Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln. She gave an introduction and then played a movie that gave an overview of the four presidents memorialized there. Then… then something to make Americans proud. The ranger told the story of the national anthem, including the background to the battle of Baltimore harbor. She recited the first three stanzas of the anthem, and then broke into song for the fourth: “Then the heav’n-rescued land, blest with victory and peace…” Then slowly, without us realizing it, huge lights came up on the faces, and by the middle of stanza they were in full view again. But even that was not the climax of the ceremony.

The good ranger then invited veterans, active duty service personnel, or the representatives of those lost in combat or currently serving overseas. A few dozen descended the stairs, and as we began to approach the stage, clapping began, and grew. We presented our salutes as the flag descended it’s pole, and members of a boy scout troop folded it. And what followed that was a standing ovation for all the men there. A lot passed through my mind in those moments on the stage.

I thought of my Dad, an 18 year old country boy facing kamikazes and the loss of his best friend in the Pacific in World War II; of Art Brodin riding a glider into Normandy on the 6^th of June, 1944, and his son Bob flying helicopters for the Navy all over the world, including Antarctica and in support of combat in Desert Storm; of Eric Olsen volunteering for a year in Afghanistan after being completely out of the Army for many years; of watching Gary Lowery graduate from MCRD, and that moment that he came to a stop at the head of his platoon, carrying the colors, a different man than the one we had said farewell to three months before; of seeing Mark Rockefeller in church for the first time after Baghdad and thanking God that he was back home with his wife and children; of Wayne Hall praying for his battalion of Marines at Fallujah; of Jeff Coleman waiting and waiting to join the Air Force, and getting his patience rewarded; of seven generations of Millers serving our great nation; and of a Flag Day at the Atkins', grieving with them at the loss of Shawn.

And I thought, this moment is really for them, for all of them and many more, and not for me. The ranger invited each of us on the stage to come by and touch the flag that she held in her arms. As my turn came, and I looked into her face, I saw wet eyes and tear-streamed cheeks. I think she knew what it meant to each and every one of us.