Not just a day off

Memorial Day is much more than just a long weekend Larrie Wanberg Feature Editor The day is indelible in my memory when, as a Boy Scout with a snare drum strapped to one leg and sounding the cadence, I lead of a hometown parade in 1944, marching just behind an aging four-member American Legion Honor Guard. The place was a rural ranching town in North Dakota – only five blocks wide with a Main Street nine blocks long that was filled with older Legion veterans marching to the drum beat. Behind the veterans were a few horse-drawn “floats” naming an organization (gas was rationed), a pre-war flatbed truck with a dozen beginning members of the school band and a long stream of youth carrying small American Flags, many on horseback that