One year on his birthday, May 30 — Memorial Day — when U.S. Army Capt. Herbert C. Crosby was just a boy, he burst through the front door of his childhood home, shouting with glee.
" 'Mom! Mom! Guess what? Someone has the same birthday as me!' " he said. And she said, 'How do you know?' " Marylou Wade, Crosby's sister, recalled Monday with a sad smile. "And he said, 'Because someone else has a flag on their door, same as us!' "
What little was recovered of Crosby's remains were interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on May 25, 2007, 37 years after the helicopter he was piloting went down somewhere between Tien Phuoc and Chu Lai, South Vietnam. For more than two decades, Crosby and the three-man flight crew of Firebird 91 were among the nearly 2,700 U.S. servicemembers listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War.
When at last he returned home, Wade said, all the recovery crews could find were six teeth and two shards of bone. "And his dog tag," she said, holding up the shining metal pendant, dangling from a ball-chain necklace around her neck.
Wade has volunteered at the Cape Canaveral National Cemetery since it opened in 2016. A past chair of the cemetery's all-volunteer support committee, she stood Monday under the baking sun, handing out programs and bottled water to the nearly 800 attendees at its 2024 Memorial Day remembrance ceremony.
All around, children played in the lush grass as parents lounged nearby under slim patches of shade. Family members helped older adults cross the rocky, cobbled street near the flag assembly plaza.
For the family of the fallen, Memorial Day is so much more than a day at the beach or a mattress sale, Wade said. It can be intensely personal.
"My father died on Memorial Day. My brother was born on Memorial Day," Wade said, her voice beginning to break. "People need to understand: It's not 'Happy Memorial Day.' It is 'Memorial Day,' " she said — a day to honor the very real price veterans and their families have paid in service to their country.
That's a feeling shared by many of the hundreds of volunteers that came out Sunday to place American flags on each of the cemetery's over 11,000 graves, said Tom Fitzgerald, a local team leader for the national advocacy group, Flags for Fallen Veterans.
"A lot of them have family members here. There's a few that even want to put the flag on their loved one's grave," Fitzgerald said. "They just want to be a part of it. That's their way of remembering and showing appreciation for veterans that raised their right hand and helped give us our freedom."
Fitzgerald himself donates his time every year not only to the annual flag-placing ceremony, but also to the support committee and Wreaths Across America, which each December places wreathes on the graves of veterans interred in national cemeteries across the U.S.
Since 2016, mules belonging to Fitzgerald and his wife have pulled the iconic ceremonial caisson, draped in an American flag, that has served as the emblematic highlight of the Cape Canaveral cemetery's Memorial Day service.
"My brother is interred here. He died at 47 an Army veteran. My in-laws are here. My father-in-law was a World War II veteran. There is always significance," he said. "It's addictive to be volunteering and being a strong veteran advocate for the cemetery."
Wade held up a photo of her brother she said she carries with her to every veterans' event. In the picture, Crosby squats near a piece of military hardware in his U.S. Army flight suit, broad-shouldered and ruggedly handsome. He was just 22 years old when he went missing, she said.
"I try to put a face with the name. People remember that," she said. "I like to say that he came into this world with a flag on Memorial Day, and he left with a flag on him in Arlington."
Eric Rogers is a watchdog reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Rogers at 321-242-3717 or esrogers@floridatoday.com.
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