By HAROLD KELLER

Next Friday, May 24, at 7:30 a.m., at the LaPlace Holiday Inn, Get High on Life will host its fourth annual Memorial Day breakfast.

Last year, more than 140 people attended and paid tribute to the men and women who served their country in the different wars and especially remembered those who gave their lives to defend the freedoms we enjoy.

The public is invited, and a special appeal to all VFW and American Legion members and their families to make plans to attend.

If you are interested, please call Get High on Life at 652-8477.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but Memorial Day means more to me than just a holiday and a long weekend.

Freedom is not free and can best be explained in the following poem written by Cadet Maj. Kelly Strong, Air Force Junior ROTC, Homestead Senior High School, and Homestead, Fla., 1988:

Freedom is Not Free

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
and Then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform,
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut square and eyes alert,
He’d stand out in any crowd.

I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mother’s tears?

How many pilot’s planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldier’s graves?
No, freedom is not free.

I heard the sound of “Taps” one night,
When everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times
That “Taps” had meant Amen,
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea,
Of unmarked graves at Arlington.
No, freedom is not free.

HAROLD KELLER writes this column as part of his affiliation with the Get High on Life religious motivational group.