There is a two-week gap between Memorial Day, when we honor the fallen defenders of our democracy, and Flag Day, when we celebrate the banner under which they fought.
Usually, Flag Day is a chance to show the colors and, for the myriad families and businesses flying the flag, to check on them to make sure they are not in a bedraggled condition.
But during this year's fortnight between the two holidays, there was a news item that should remind all of us of the cost of commitment to Old Glory: a debt we owe to those who gave everything for our freedom.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that a sailor from Louisiana has been identified among those who perished in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Navy Seaman 1st Class Houston Temples, 24, will be buried later this year in Washington Parish.
Temples was among 400 killed in the sinking of the battleship USS Oklahoma, and though the department spent years recovering bodies, it was able to identify only 35 of them. In 2015, with better technology, the department began exhuming remains from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Temples will be buried in Bogalusa on Dec. 7, 81 years after the attack which brought the United States into World War II.
Honor him and his fellow heroes by showing the flag proudly today.
