David never met Dale. Dale DeVries died in 1993. 14 years later, David Morris would ride from Wisconsin to stand in a Northlake cemetery holding a flag on a beautiful autumn Saturday.

The spirit that stirs us to honor our fallen must usually accommodate less than a week of advance notice. Our computers alert us and we find ways to cover our other responsibilities. Then we go.

We had a month of advance notice for the DeVries memorial on September 15^th. Then, less than a week before that date the Greg Bowman funeral was scheduled for the same date. Dale had waited 14 years – he could wait another 2 weeks.

If Greg had life, he would have made the trip from Princeton. Instead, he was present in death.

Merlene and John were the only ones to make the ride from Princeton.

Four dozen bikes and a half-dozen cages gathered just two blocks from the home of Glen and Sue, two Ride Captains who would this time be at the center of our grieving family. Not counting Glen and Sue, and Greg, there would be one Ride Captain for every seven others among us. We had to go to Greg’s funeral but we wanted to go to the memorial for Glen’s father, too. We were thankful to be able to go to both.

The flag-folding detail went in advance to the cemetery. The rest of us moved as a unit the two blocks and paused on the street in front of the DeVries home. Sue came out with a box of red, white and blue ribbons that had a picture of the Sergeant and a pin hot-glued in place.

We then moved in procession to the cemetery. It was several miles through city roads and traffic. I must admit to some unofficial intersection blocking and red light running. (At the briefing earlier, Fred had asked us all to wave. I missed the shot of fifty right hands raised above our heads. In Illinois, we don’t do ride waivers. We do ride waves.) In fact, the trip was uneventful and safe.

We turned into Fairview Memorial Park and parked. That is the first time I noticed a bike flag as big as mine. It was flown by the son of Glen and Sue – Ryan. It was the flag the Patriot Guard would hold over the grave, fold and present. Ryan later explained to me that it had to fly at least once, and so it did.

Glen gathered his family around the gravesite and the PGRiders formed a Circle of Comfort around the family. Glen asked the flagholders to come closer – to join the family – to hear him better. Then he told us about his father, a United States Army sergeant.

It would have been a great honor simply to be invited to hold flags for the Sergeant. It was greater for the son of the Sergeant to treat us like family. The big flag covered the buried casket from head to toe, four of us holding it as Glen spoke and the rest of us listened.

And then our Ride Captain spoke. Fred’s voice cracked when he spoke the words “long overdue” and many of us had to steel ourselves to maintain decorum. He read a prayer written by another Ride Captain. John had been out of the country for months but is still an elder of his church and was among us this day, represented by his words.

We would hear echo taps, a rifle salute and bagpipes. And then we folded the big flag.

Four Ride Captains wearing their maroon caps carefully folded the flag that represents the culture that produced Sergeant Dale DeVries. He fought in Germany’s Rhineland and died at the time of the Black Hawk down in Mogadishu. The Patriot Guard would not come into existence for another 12 years. Folding the flag was the essence of our ceremony.

And the folded flag was the essence of our tribute.

There was a moment when the four maroon caps faced each other, the folded flag in their midst, and we all waited. For me, it was not flying that big flag that transformed it from a textile product into a sacred cloth. Nor was holding it over the grave the act that vested it with the weight of two-and-a-third centuries of American soldiers. For me, that moment came when these four serious men stood silently still – unsmiling, unapologetic, unafraid.

Mark presented Glen with a brass PGR coin.

Jon presented Glen with the folded flag.

And then we allowed the Sergeant to return to his eternal rest.

But memorial services are different from funerals. When we stand to honor a soldier who died only a week before, the surviving family and the other mourners have not yet reached closure. Maybe we help them to reconcile their sacrifice, but not enough time had passed for them to be at ease with their loss. Any celebration of God’s will is temporarily overshadowed by cruel fate. Funerals are sad.

A memorial for a soldier 14 years after he died is different. We all know that we will all die and Dale’s family has had time to accept that his time had come. I don’t think that Glen wanted us to be sad. I think he initiated this event so that we could share with him his pride in what his father did and what he was. Our ceremony was a solemn matter but this celebration would not be overshadowed.

So we returned to Glen and Sue’s home and we parked on the narrow part of their driveway.

We helped ourselves to the buffet in their garage.

(And when stocks ran low, they were resupplied from the house.)

And then we sat in the wide part of their driveway and we ate.

I sat next to Sue’s father. He told me about his recent loss of his older brother. I asked Linda to give him a kiss.

And then we returned to Wisconsin and to Princeton. I left thinking about Glen’s father and Sue’s father. I decided to visit my father on my way back home.

My father is in Glen Ellyn and that is where I attended the first two years of high school. I was a Hilltopper of Glenbard West. I played football for Bill Duchon who was the head football coach from 1960 to 1976. As it happened, this was homecoming Saturday.

I watched the girls.

And I watched the boys.

We lost to York by a touchdown.

The only Hilltopper to die in Vietnam was Bruce Capel. He is buried in Glen Ellyn.

My father, an army medical corps lieutenant of the Korean era, is buried 15 feet north of Bruce.

Pictures of the Dale DeVries memorial are organized into three albums:

the staging

the cemetery

the driveway