The following article appeared in the Fall 2017 edition of the Warrior Within.

By Rob Fournier, esq.

It was one of those early summer days.  A morning mist rose over the sloping hill.  And it was peacefully quiet.  The kind of quiet you only find in a cemetery.

It was Memorial Day weekend.  Three days when most Americans are thinking of picnics, summer vacations or the end of a school year.  But a cemetery on Memorial Day holds other memories.  It should for all of us.  But for most, it doesn't.  Nestled in the slopes were reasons we can enjoy the languid afternoons, the camping trips, the Disney World.  Sadly, those grave markers often hold memories of young people who too longed for those same wistful days.  It was the America they knew.  It became their sacrifice.

As I walked the cemetery grounds that morning, I was absorbed by the stillness and the rows and rows of American flags that crisscrossed the landscape.  A Boy Scout troop led by their adult chaperons dutifully placed flags according to their illustrated maps.  They marked sites that had long ago been abandoned by visitors.  Their works seemed neither anguished or diminished but measured and culpable.  Their reverence belied the sacrifice of those they honored.  Someone had taken the time to explain to the young people that what they enjoyed was a direct result of those they recognized.  It was more than a flag in the ground.  It would be good for all of us to remember that cost.

That ultimate sacrifice can be understood by the fact that those same young people that morning have the chance to be anything they aspire to be based on their talents and hard work.  It is also on display when you walk into a voting booth without the outcome already decided.  Or it's the simple realization that when you wake up in the morning, you can open the door, and walk out.  That's what freedom means.  That is what those flags represent.

It was in that same morning light that the idea of the Medal of Honor jersey first came to me.  It seemed the perfect complement to our 100-year anniversary of WSU athletics.  A tribute to those who allow us to play kid's games.  As I mentioned in my remarks to the football team when we unveiled the uniform, "we wear their names on our backs, because they have always had our backs."  And it was not just the football team.  Every student-athlete would wear some uniform that acknowledged all that the Medal of Honor represents.  The duty and sacrifice symbolized by that designation.

What I was not expecting was the reaction.  From ESPN's "like" to over 4 million followers, to the feature on College Football Game Day, to the NCAA acknowledgement of one the nation's top uniforms.  But more significantly was notes and emails from all over the country – from former recipients, from thankful family members, to soldiers in combat who reflected on the life of a person they knew ... and sometimes lost.  Likewise, the WSU student-athletes, many of who took the time to read the biographical sketches of the recipient whose name they proudly wore.  Neither race nor gender made any difference.  Just the sacrifice.  It is what still makes America's quest so necessary, so important, even today.

I have met many of those unknown heroes of past generations.  Those meetings have always reinforced to me their love of family, of country, of community.  They saw the best in America.  They saw its hope, they saw its opportunity, they saw its promise.  But those same promises demanded a resolve, a purpose and a commitment.  Those cemetery flags represented that ... so did the Medal of Honor insignias ... and I think, for many WSU student-athletes, they too understood that meaning.

We are a country that remains unfinished ... but we should not be a country that is ungrateful.  Unfortunately, we have some who think more like the latter.  That somehow America owes them something. I suggest they visit more cemeteries ...those with flags.

I have heard from so many Americans around the country through emails and notes, how significant the simple act of wearing a uniform with a Medal of Honor insignia and name has meant to them.  These were heartfelt notes.  Of the many, one had particular significance.

The writer who knew war, who knew the cost of freedom, who had witnessed its sacrifice, mentioned that in US military cemeteries all over the world that distinguish the fallen Americans who never made it home, that each grave marker faces America.  How poignant. In sixteen foreign countries, in places like Luxembourg, Manila, Tunisia, Normandy and Lorraine, that fallen hero glimpses back to America.  Their cemetery sites are arranged without regard to race, color or creed.  That is America.  It is something worth remembering every day.