Copyright © 2009 - 2012   Lokahi Foundation ~ Designated Trademarks and Brands are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved   FREEDOM IS NOT FREE by Kelly Strong 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, and so proud; 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 mothers' tears? How many pilots' planes shot down? How many died at sea? How many foxholes were soldiers' graves? No, freedom isn't 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 in Arlington. No, freedom isn't free.   In Memory of American Joint Armed Forces, Fire Fighters, Law Enforcement, Civil and Public Servants who gave the ultimate for peace and freedom. Punchbowl National Cemetery                                                  Honolulu, Hawaii   In these Gardens are Recorded the Names of Americans; who gave their lives in the service of their country and whose earthly resting place is known only to God.   USS Arizona Memorial         Pearl Harbor, Hawaii   To the Memory of the Gallant Men here entombed and their shipmates who gave their lives in action on December 7, 1941 on the USS Arizona Pearl Harbor, Hawaii