Retired Navy veteran Randy Melton places American flags at the gravesites of veterans in the Field of Honor on Tuesday in preparation for the Memorial Day weekend at Owensboro Memorial Gardens in Owensboro, Ky., on May 20, 2025. Melton is a member of all of the veterans organizations in town and volunteers every year to place the flags. (Alan Warren/The Messenger-Inquirer via AP)

May is a beautiful month. Green grass, dogwood blossoms of pink and white, tulips and daffodils and bleeding hearts and irises and yes, even dandelions, adding their reds and yellows to complete a real-life painting any artist would find difficult to duplicate. And my favorite-lilacs. How can one forget the most noble of all of spring’s “flowers?” Their royal purple, lavender and white beauty and unforgettable fragrance do not allow us to forget. Pity its short lifespan. That anything so glorious be given but a few weeks to live seems so unfair.

Then again, considering the joy the lilac brings despite its brevity, we must be grateful that it lives at all. In a real sense, May is a renaissance; a rebirth of those many things which make life worth living including golf, baseball, gardening, bike riding, fishing, picnics, long walks. It’s also the month we observe our most reverent and thereby “quiet” holiday. Memorial Day. How ironic it seems to honor our nation’s war dead in a month, exuding so much life.

When I was a young boy, I experienced something that made what originally was Decoration Day the most emotional of times for me. My friends and I were taking a shortcut through Monroe Street Cemetery in Little Falls after attending the annual parade.

As we weaved our way through the maze of gravestones, we passed by an elderly lady on her knees before a red granite stone on which a name and dates were etched. February 20, 1924-June 30, 1942. She was sobbing, gently.

While my friends ran on, I stopped nearby and watched her for a while. She never moved except to place a few sprigs of lilacs at the foot of her son’s tombstone. I knew it was her son because she kept saying his name over and over. Bobby. Bobby. Before I left, I noticed a small red and gold flag staked by the side of the stone. I thought-a Marine killed in WWII at the age of 18. As I slowly departed, I could feel her pain and hear her sobs as I would, in my mind’s eye, every Memorial Day since.

She and all the other Gold Star mothers are also victims of wars; living victims who endure the interminable pain resulting from a broken heart. TS Eliot wrote in his classic poem, The Wasteland, that “April is the cruelest month of all.” He was mistaken. May is. Mother’s Day. Memorial Day.

I recently came across Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade,” a testament to the courage of men at war. Its setting was the Crimean War, a mid-19th century conflict between Russia and Britain, France and Turkey. The author chronicles the hopeless cavalry charge of the British Light Brigade on October 35, 1854. Despite the fact that the lancers never should have attacked as their orders had been misinterpreted, they raced into a valley surrounded by hills entrenched with Russian cannons and were cut to pieces. They never wavered in their duty despite the overwhelming odds against them, victims of “some hideous blunder.”

Theirs not to reason why

Theirs but to do or die

As Memorial Day approached, I couldn’t help be struck by the poignancy of “The Charge,” especially after having read about Jason Lee Dunham and Ramona Valdez. Each exemplified the kind of courage displayed by the young Brits referred to in the poem.

Marine Cpl. Dunham was from Scio, a small, rural village in the western part of the state. On April 14 (my youngest daughter’s birthday), 2004, he was leading a patrol near Husaybah, Iraq, when his Battalion Commander’s convoy came under attack. While coming to its aid, his patrol came upon seven Iraqi vehicles in a column.

The Marines stopped the cars and began searching for weapons. Suddenly, an insurgent jumped from one and onto Cpl. Dunham. While Jason took him down, the enemy released a grenade. As the Citation states: “Aware of the imminent danger and without hesitation, Corporal Dunham covered the grenade with his helmet and body, bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his Marines from the blast. In an ultimate and selfless act of bravery in which he was mortally wounded, he saved the lives of a least two fellow Marines….”

Eight days later, at Bethesda National Hospital, with mom and dad at his side, Jason Lee Dunham died. He was 22. Posthumously, he received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Bronx native Ramona Valdez, daughter of immigrants, was a Corporal in the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force. Always concerned about others, especially her loving family, Cpl. V. was more worried about their safety than hers. So worried that in April of 2005 she convinced her mom, Elida, and sister, Fiorella, to move to Reading, Pennsylvania; a place far from the mean streets of a city rife with crime and violence. She got her family to pack up by threatening to reup four more years if they didn’t. Her mother’s reply to the threat was sadly ironic. “I don’t want you to die. I’ll move.” A month after she should have been home, the communications specialist with hopes of becoming a policewoman was killed when her vehicle was blown up by an IED. June 23, 2005. She was 20.

As Marine Corporals Dunham and Valdez had a duty, I think we do as well-one much easier and far less deadly. We can honor those who made the supreme sacrifice by working to make our communities, our country, a better place in which to live, be it by organizing a charitable fund raiser or being a better person tomorrow than you were yesterday. Tennyson’s words ensured that the Light Brigade’s glory would never fade.

By doing our duty, our deeds will guarantee the same for Corporals Dunham and Valdez and the other 326 heroes whose faces grace our Fallen Stars Memorial.

Ray Lenarcic is a 1965 State University of New York at Fredonia graduate and is a resident of Herkimer.