What makes me cry

Memorial Day is one of my favorite days of the year. Why? Two reasons: 1) I LOOOOVVE America and I am SOOOO grateful for the men and women who have fought for our freedom. 2) I run in the 10K Bolder Boulder and sit in Folsom Field Stadium at the University of Colorado and cry with no shame.

I stand and clap through the whole Memorial Day Tribute: Presentation of the Nation’s Colors, 21-gun salute, recognition of Veterans, Taps, skydivers dropping into the stadium carrying flags representing all branches of the Armed Forces plus our glorious American Flag, and a closing with a flyover by U.S. Military jets immediately after singing the National Anthem.

I really need a Kleenex when the sky diver gracefully floats onto the field gracing a huge American Flag, and when the chosen artist sings the Star-Spangled Banner. This year it was played on bugle by 90-year-old World War II veteran Stewart Boone. You would have cried too; it was so beautiful and moving.

I’m including the lyrics to the entire National Anthem…it never hurts to refresh our memory of the message, and to see the verses we seldom sing. Sing it out loud – sing it and cry like I do.

Interspersed in the lyrics are pictures of three flags I saw in an antique store in Globe, Arizona. They were so majestic hanging on the wall and I had never seen them hanging together. Join me in crying – Tears tell the whole story of gratitude too large for words.

The Star-Spangled Banner

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen thro’ the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation;
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

         

Pictures from the Bolder Boulder giving a glimpse of the American Spirit.