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Serving America
Saturday, May 27, 2017
The price of freedom: 7,000 white crosses DENNIS WYATT The Bulletin
Twenty-eight years ago this weekend Charles O. Palmer II was looking forward to wearing the Buffalo Green gown and mortar with pride as part of the Manteca High Class of 1989. By all accounts, the good-humored Palmer loved life. He proudly represented the Buffaloes as a running back on the football field, wrestled, ran track, and was a trumpet player in the band. Palmer was proud to be a part of the Manteca High tradition. He’s part of a different team now.
A team that has paid a heavy price to assure that his son — and the rest of us — can be free. That team is comprised of more than 850,000 men and women who have died serving America in combat. You can catch a glimpse of Palmer in his Marine dress blues through mid-June at the memorial to the fallen in the Global War on Terror at Dell’Osso Farms along Interstate 5 in Lathrop. Palmer’s photo plus 60 of his fallen comrades in the War on Terror from the 209 region are part of the display Nearby are the 7,000 simple white crosses representing sons, daugh-
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With Respect, Honor and Gratitude. Thank You Veterans.
ters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters who have paid the ultimate price in Iraq and Afghanistan. In another time they could very well have flocked to a place like Woodward Park in the middle of a three-day weekend such as today to enjoy a picnic, watch as their kids gleefully scale playground equipment or to play a quick game of pick-up hoops with friends. Glance at the crosses and you have to ask yourself what kind of person gives up all of that to face death in some god-forsaken corner of the world? You’ll hear and see the answer today, Sunday, Memorial Day, and the days that follow. It won’t be in the speeches although they will be powerful and moving. It won’t be in displays of a military might whether it is in the form of C-130s in a missing man formation or in helicopter gunships. Instead you’ll see it in people worshipping as they please. You’ll hear it in the laughter of children free to be children. You’ll see it in the faces of men and women who aren’t afraid to venture out. You’ll notice it in the fact that people of all ethnicities and faiths can gather without fear of govern-
Charles O. Palmer II
ment reprisals. Those who laid down their lives understood that preachers don’t give us freedom of religion, that reporters don’t give us freedom of the press, that poets don’t give us freedom of speech, that campus organizers don’t give us freedom to assemble, that lawyers don’t give us the right to a fair trial, and that politicians don’t give us the right to vote. Our freedoms were secured — and have been preserved — by the citizen-soldier. SEE PALMER, PAGE 23
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