Salutes Beneath the Mesas

American Legion Lincoln Post 50

Salutes Beneath the Mesas

Flags Before Memorial Day

After passing the Palisade Municipal Cemetery alongside the Colorado River, shallow in places from this year’s poor snowfall, I kept replaying the scene I had just driven past in Palisade, Colorado, often called the Peach Capital of America. Several people stood quietly among the graves beneath the western Colorado sky. From the road, I had noticed salutes being exchanged while small American flags slowly appeared row by row across the cemetery grounds. Call it intuition. Call it a feeling. Call it the quiet pull of a moment asking not to be missed. Exactly one mile later, I turned the car around.

The first people I met were Ken Sewell of Palisade and Steve Jones from nearby Clifton. They explained how the volunteers carefully worked through lists of names, locating each grave one by one. Veterans received an American flag placed beside the headstone. Members of the Ladies Auxiliary and women’s service organizations received a blue auxiliary service flag instead.

What I came upon was not a public ceremony or organized event for attention. It was something quieter and far more meaningful.

Jose Galvan, a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, and John Nelms, a Navy veteran, both grew up in Palisade and attended Central High School together. They moved through the cemetery with practiced familiarity, carrying bundles of flags beneath the afternoon sun while sharing stories of the town they were raised in. Nearby, Greg Schneck, a Navy veteran and member of the American Legion, worked alongside his wife Louise, an Air Force veteran. The couple had moved to Colorado from the East Coast after decades away.

“I didn’t want to spend my golden years on the East Coast,” Louise told me with a smile. “We took a leap of faith.” They arrived in Grand Junction during Memorial Day weekend in 2023 and decided Colorado would become home. Louise said her husband, Greg loved hunting, fishing. They loved the open country, and wanting a different pace of life. Nearby, longtime friends Ron and Arnie continued placing flags together as they had done for years, unable to remember exactly when they first started because it had simply become part of who they were.

Standing there watching these volunteers move carefully from marker to marker, it became clear this was not simply about placing flags in the ground. “It was about making sure no name was forgotten.”

The mesas towered in the distance beyond the cemetery. Farm fields stretched toward the horizon. Small American flags moved gently in the wind beneath a wide Colorado sky. For many people, Memorial Day has become the unofficial beginning of summer, a long weekend filled with travel, cookouts, and time away from work. But standing there among these volunteers, it became clear that for others, Memorial Day still carries its original purpose: to pause, to remember, and to honor those who once stood in service long before we arrived here to enjoy the freedoms we now casually inherit. One name at a time. One flag at a time. One quiet act of gratitude at a time.