Today, Memorial Day 2024, we pay tribute our fallen soldiers, and those who served, survived, and struggled home.

It's a day I remember my American Revolutionary War ancestors, but especially my Civil War ancestor, Samuel Davidson Laughlin, who at age 18 served as a Union color bearer in the Civil War. He was selected to carry Old Glory for his height (6'3"), his strength (farm boy from Linn, Mo.) and his courage (front-line duty).

"Being a color bearer (aka carrying the flag), was a prestigious and important role in the Army. Not only were you carrying the symbol of what you were fighting for, the flag was any easy mark for soldiers to organize around," according to an article written in a National Museum of Civil War Medicine post by Amelia Grabowski, the outreach and education coordinator at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum.   

Young Samuel carried the flag in three of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War: the Battle of Lookout Mountain, and the battles of Chicamauga and Chattanooga. A musket tore a hole in his flag but he emerged from the Civil War physically unscathed.

He returned home to Missouri, married, moved with his family to Castle Rock, Wash., and built a round barn there in 1883. He would die of blood poisoning in 1910. In 1986 his barn would be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.  

He rests in a small cemetery next to his beloved barn. His gravestone reads simply: "Gone, But Not Forgotten."

"Color bearer" Noah Coughlan, a native of Vacaville, Calif., paid tribute to American soldiers, including Samuel Laughlin, in his 2023 Run Across America that spanned 167 days and 3,600 miles.  See Run for Revival. 

In addition, Memorial Day traditionally marks the beginning of summer, and as an aside, it's often the weekend when we see our first monarch of the year. Yesterday, right on cue, a monarch fluttered through our garden,  touched down on a cherry laurel branch,surveyed the milkweed and floral resources, and then, poof...gone.

But not forgotten.