Matt Crawford knows all too well that freedom is not free.

Of all the comments I head and read over the Memorial Day holiday, it was something Crawford said that stuck in my mind.

Crawford was part of a group unveiling a tribute wall at VFW Post 598 in Darby Borough to honor soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Crawford knows a little something about those conflicts. He lost a few friends there, while barely escaping with his own life.

Crawford was a member of Bridge Company Bravo, a Marine Reserve detachment based in Folsom.

Lance Cpl. Patrick Adle, Cpl. John Todd III, and Sgt. Alan Sherman did not return from Iraq. They were killed when an improvised explosive device detonated as the humvee they were riding in drove by in Iraq.
Crawford made it back, but with serious injuries. He was blinded in one eye and suffered nerve damage to his hand and leg.

Crawford, very much still alive, took time to remember his brothers who are not this Memorial Day.

“It’s important that the soldiers who gave their lives for us are recognized and remembered,” he said.

Another local vet, Danny Vare, who served in Vietnam, gave still another valuable view of the service he offered his country.

Vare and many other Nam vets did not exactly get the red carpet rolled out for them when they returned to the States.

That’s one of the reasons he’s now involved in the VFW Post and works to honor veterans.

“I didn’t know then how important it was to come home to a nation that would appreciate what we had been doing,” Vare said of the honor unveiled for local vets. “Now, I want to make sure that these guys don’t know the feeling of being turned on like that.”

It’s something all of us could emulate, and not just one day a year.