After 9/11, I enlisted. Why me? Why not?

It was in May 2000 when I first walked through the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. I was a twentysomething enjoying the life-changing experience of a Washington internship and on my way to becoming the second in my family to graduate from college. My solid upbringing and civics classes taught me to prioritize visiting this stunning cemetery; I knew I hadn’t gotten here on my own.

Someone else gave me this sweet privilege of freedom, to live my little life to the fullest. Someone else gave their life for it. And I must never forget this. I must honor them, make a difference in my own way — and make it count.

The following year and a few months after my graduation, 9/11 happened. When I told close family and friends that I was considering enlisting in the military, I encountered a lot of surprise, resistance and questions: Why? Wouldn’t someone else do it? I countered every concerned Why? with Why not? This was my country, it was attacked, and the force would need to expand in order to take on this new threat.

Of the less than 1% of Americans who have worn a uniform since the Sept. 11 attacks, at least 6,926 men and women have died in combat operations.

Now, on Memorial Day 2017, that someone else has a name I know. The men and women at Arlington once were by my side — to my left and to my right. Now I have the perspective of having rendered a 4-second delayed salute to our fallen heroes, having stood at a heart-wrenching ramp ceremony, often at sunrise, on a tarmac in the Middle East, watching a flag-draped coffin carried onto an aircraft for the hero’s final flight home. Someone else has a name: Chris, David, Billie Jean, Gabe, and so on.

My experience of Memorial Day took on another new dimension when I had a son. It was in 2013 that his little blue eyes began to watch me. Now what would I do on Memorial Day? Shopping? Barbecues? Yes. And he needed to see me take a knee. He needed to see the action of honoring someone else.

That’s when the idea came to me and my husband (who is also a veteran) that the street sign we drive by every day, the one to our park, meant something more. We knew what it usually meant when a name like LCpl. Gabe Raney was on a street sign: Gabe didn’t come home. We didn’t know Gabe or his family, but we decided, again, not to wait for someone else. And we didn’t ask for official approval. We just put a full-size American flag on his sign.

In 2015, we received funding from The Mission Continues, a veterans service organization, to erect an actual flagpole in the park in honor of this fallen Marine. That was when we knew we needed to seek permission from the town. The council unanimously rallied, and the flagpole turned into a cherished Veterans Memorial. My neighbors in Pleasant View, Tenn., did not wait for someone else to do it.