Fagen Fighters<\/a>.\u00a0 Although we had visited this collection before, our visit that day was to see a travelling Holocaust exhibit featuring Minnesota survivors.\u00a0 Also new to the museum was a German boxcar which houses a two-sided exhibit.\u00a0 One side featuring Nazi officers supervising as a Jewish family exits the boxcar, and the other depicting American soldiers who were prisoners of war. \u00a0Our visit was emotionally draining as the journey was heart heavy indeed, but I completely lost it when we got to the boxcar.\u00a0 I broke down and sobbed.\u00a0 When I looked in the eyes of the extremely realistic wax figures on the GI side, I felt as if I was looking in the eyes of my great-great uncle, Arlie, who was captured shortly after landing on European soil and was forced to work in awful conditions the remainder of the war.\u00a0 I have only heard bits and pieces of his story as it just wasn\u2019t something he talked about, but I knew enough.\u00a0 And there I stood overcome by my emotions as my baffled family looked on. The cost of freedom is never free.<\/p>\n![\"IMG_2015\"](\"https:\/\/kandynolesstevens.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/img_2015.jpg\")
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As a part of our family\u2019s commitment to service we participated in the second annual flag placing for our Modern Woodmen youth service club.\u00a0 For this project our club purchases hundreds of small flags and places them on the graves of veterans in our local cemeteries.\u00a0 It warms my heart that our children and friends spend hours walking cemetery rows, honoring those who gave of their time and energy to answer freedom\u2019s call.\u00a0 Walking in the hot July sun is a small sacrifice compared to what these men and women gave to us.\u00a0 This year one marker really stood out to me and made me wonder how I missed it last year.\u00a0 The inscription told of the greatest sacrifice of the man commemorated there.\u00a0 \u201cHe died as prisoner of war in Germany during World War II.\u201d\u00a0 Once again, I was overcome with tears.\u00a0 My people came home from their various wars, but this man\u2019s family wasn\u2019t as lucky.\u00a0 The cost of freedom is never free.<\/p>\n
Over the years, I have witnessed some things that I never believed I would like a female college student refusing to stand for the national anthem while seated next to my veteran husband, who had tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.\u00a0 Then there was the time we were shopping in another college town and there were young people protesting soldiers.\u00a0 Protesting war is one thing, protesting soldiers is something altogether different.\u00a0 The sacrifices made by individuals protecting their rights to do so, but both times I wondered how we as a society forget the sacrifices that were made on our behalf.<\/p>\n
Twice I was reminded through the eyes of my children that while we can\u2019t jog the collective memories of a nation we can instill patriotism one child at a time.\u00a0 When Reed saw the protesters he asked that we never drive by that corner again, he was too overcome with emotion to explain his daddy was one of the soldiers.\u00a0 Even at his tender age of nine or ten, he knew that the protestations were laid at the wrong boots.<\/p>\n
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Over the weekend, while tending to the grave of that sweet boy, his baby sister looked around at the North Dakota cemetery and noticed the veteran plaques sitting empty.\u00a0 \u201cWhere are their flags momma?\u201d It was a quiet little question, but it reminded me that in her eyes every veteran in every cemetery should be honored with a tiny little flag each Independence Day as a token of our gratitude.<\/p>\n
While the prairie wind whispered through my hair, I was reminded she understood the cost of freedom is never free.<\/p>\n
For this momma, that was more than enough.<\/p>\n
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My family like millions of others enjoyed our country\u2019s birthday yesterday.\u00a0 Our fanfare was reserved to the later afternoon and evening because unlike many others looming deadlines kept us tethered to the computers for a few hours. Nonetheless, the significance of the day was never forgotten.\u00a0 As dawn broke, we posted the \u201cStars and Stripes\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1],"tags":[31,1412,1413,1414,1415,1416,412,1341,1417,1418,1419,514,1420,973,1421,644],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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