As the sun beat down on Sunday afternoon, it cast a shadow on the DuPage County Veterans’ Memorial. A massive sundial, the monument symbolizes the sacrifices of wars past and future.
The grief, too, transcends time. Such is the case for the families of 26 county residents who, while serving in the military, were killed in conflict at home or abroad, beginning with the Black Hawk War in 1832. Most of them were under 30 years old when they died.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Nicholas Larson was one of them. After graduating from high school in 2003, he joined the military and was sent to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A few months into his deployment, he was killed during the American assault on Fallujah on Nov. 9, 2004.
He was only 19 years old.
“You lose your grandparents, and your mom and dad, eventually. But you just don’t expect to lose a child. It’s brutal,” said Dave Larson, Nicholas’ father, who attended an observance event near the county fairgrounds ahead of Memorial Day alongside his wife.
From Dave Larson’s neck hung a dog tag necklace; a yearbook photo of his son offering a quirky smile was printed on the front.
“I saw kids that he grew up with getting married, having children,” he said. He stood among more than two dozen white steel crosses arranged in a semicircle.
Red, blue and white artificial flowers and a small U.S. flag surrounded his son’s cross.
“I remember him the way he was, but I stopped beating myself over the head, and so did my wife, about ‘Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve,’” he said. “We’re just glad that our son Nick did what he did.”
The first cross was that of Navy Commander Dan Shanower, a 40-year-old from Naperville, who was killed in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. All other soldiers were killed or suffered fatal injuries during Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan during the U.S.-led war on terror.
“You see enough of this stuff … What we’re going into now? I pray we get out of there,” Larson said, referencing the joint U.S.-Israel campaign on Iran launched in February. The war has killed thousands in Iran and Lebanon, as well as 13 U.S. soldiers in the region.
During the small ceremony on Sunday, Gold Star families sat by a set of flagpoles, which hoisted the flags of the United States, the state of Illinois, the county of DuPage, and the POW/MIA flag honoring prisoners of war and those missing in action.
Captain Anthony Catella, chaplain with the U.S. Veteran Reserve Corps, gave a speech inspired by and borrowing from Johnny Cash’s “Ragged Old Flag,” John Wayne’s “Why Are You Marching, Son?” and President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address.
“Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has marched for liberty and freedom,” Catella said. “Yet the question is asked in each generation: ‘Why are you marching, America?’”
He listed conflicts at home and abroad, dating back to revolutionary battles in 1775.
“Mission accomplished. But in a larger sense, my countrymen, not yet. Not yet,” Catella said. “For history teaches the struggle for a country and a world at peace, where freedom endures, is a never-ending one.”
After a weapons salute — three shots with echoes that reverberated across the pond where the memorial is located — bagpipes played “Amazing Grace,” and the county flag was lowered to raise the Gold Star service flag for the first time.
