Memorial Day need not be maudlin but is always about our deepest respect, appreciation, admiration and longing. You can drink Miller Lite, barbecue with the neighbors, and hoover drugs with your eccentric Uncle Jasper. You can skip work and blow off study. You can step back from the canvass of your life and think. But today is always about resolute if terrified men who died, often alone, horribly and in confusion, in all American wars and combat.
Photo: U.S. Army officer watching Normandy coast as his landing craft approaches Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.
