| Attending a funeral at Arlington is difficult to describe. Beyond the personal sense of loss, there is an overwhelming sense of history, of pride and sorrow, and of unashamed gratitude. Heroes surround you. Here is a Marine corporal who died at 19 in Mekong Delta. Over there lies a doughboy whose remains in Flanders Fields finally came back when it was over over there. Nearby are two of the astronauts that died in the horrific launch pad fire of Apollo 1 so long ago but only yesterday in our memories. Explorers Robert Peary and Richard Byrd are here, as are three Kennedy brothers, four chief justices, the entire crew of the battleship Maine, William Jennings Bryan, and bandleader Glen Miller. Frank W. Buckles arrived just a month ago, the last American World War I veteran, passing away at 110 years old.
 Forty-six World War II Medal of Honor winners rest here, including Audie Murphy and Jimmy Doolittle. You’ve heard of them, but do you know of Robert R. Scott, a sailor who went down with the USS California while pumping air to comrades trapped below decks on December 7, 1941? I want to find his grave, talk to this boy, and wonder at his selfless sacrifice. He was only one of thousands, from Omaha Beach to Bataan to Inchon to Baghdad to Gettysburg to San Juan Hill from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Legions of men who gave, as Abraham Lincoln would say, the “last full measure of devotion”.
And there are women here too. Hundreds of them who served their country with as much dedication and courage as any man.
Lt. Kara Hultgreen is buried here. She was the first female Navy fighter pilot to lose her life while flying her F-16. She was preceded by Barbara Rainey, also resting here, the first woman to fly any type of aircraft for the Navy, killed in a training accident. Margariette Higgins is here. She won the Pulitzer as the only woman war correspondent in the Korean War. Across the green lawn is Major Marie Rossi, whose helicopter went down on the last day of Operation Desert Storm. Nearby is Dr. Anita McGee, the first woman Army surgeon, who founded the Army Nurse Corps in 1900. Fittingly, one can also find a special memorial to all military nurses on the grounds.
 You know where you were in 1986 when the space shuttle exploded taking teacher Christa McAuliffe and Dr Judith Resnick with the rest of the Challenger crew to their deaths in the skies above Florida. Their comingled remains are interred here in a special memorial. So too are three of the brave crew of the shuttle Columbia, including Navy Captain Dr Laurel Clark, resting near a monument to their courage.
There’s a story behind every one of the over 300,000 graves in the 624 acres of Arlington National Cemetery. And every week 100 more are added to their number in the glory and grief of a military funeral. Go there this Memorial Day, walk among the honored dead who have given us so much. And pray, as I do, that somehow Arlington will run out of customers before it runs out of space to accommodate them.
If you go:
Arlington National Cemetery is open to the public at 8 am 365 days a year. From April 1 to Sept. 30 the cemetery closes at 7 p.m.; the other six months it closes at 5 p.m. From Interstate 395 through Washington DC take exit 8-B “Arlington National Cemetery”.
A first stop on a trip to the cemetery should include the Visitors Center, located by the entrance, where maps, guidebooks, exhibits, information services, grave locations, a bookstore and restrooms can be found. Visit http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/index.htm
Photos courtesy Arlington National Cemetery
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