NO, FREEDOM ISN'T FREE
Community Is Forever Changed
Lindsey Rendlen :: 5/29/2006 - ABC 17 KMIZ TV - NEWS
Memorial Day 2006 is different for the close-knit community of Jamestown. Wednesday will mark three weeks since fallen marine Lance Corporal Leon Deraps was laid to rest. The 19 year old died May 6th when a roadside bomb exploded near his humvee.
Flags quietly waved Monday in the afternoon heat; flags still waving in honor of Deraps. Residents with flags still on display in their yards say they just can't take them down. Seventeen-year Jamestown resident, Ruby Sabel, says this Memorial Day is different in her town, "It makes a person realize how thankful we should be."
Trucks belonging to friends of Deraps are still moving tributes, with windows painted promising to remember their hero. Childhood friends of Deraps, Tyler McPron and Jeff Gerlach visited their friends' grave. Gerlach says it's a visit he'll likely make year after year.
No, Freedom Isn't Free
I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers' tears?
How many pilots' planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No, freedom isn't free.
I heard the sound of taps one night,
When everything was still
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That taps had meant "Amen,"
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn't free.
