It doesn’t take much for me to feel patriotic. So it’s no surprise that’s exactly how I felt all Memorial Day weekend. So did Mary Kay. But it was a surprise that my kids did too, and they’re in their 20s.

We spent the holiday in Washington, D.C., where I commented – and more than once – “This is the only place to be on Memorial Day.” John P. Cosgrove, our host, called a few days after we returned to say a Washington Post reporter must have overheard me because that’s exactly what he wrote in an article the next morning. The reporter either overheard me, or got caught up in the emotion just as I had.

Memorial Day has always been special to me. And my comment in Washington notwithstanding, I’ve been fortunate enough to be other places on Memorial Day that I found just as moving. That includes right here in Greater Pittston. When I was about 10 years old my family moved into a home on Butler Street, right across from the old Pittston High School. Memorial Day came just a few days later and the kids in our family were dazzled to see the Pittston High marching band assembling in the school yard for the annual parade. With two rows of drummers – high school bands were massive in those days – keeping the beat, they marched out onto Butler Street and went around the corner onto Defoe heading toward the William Street hill and downtown Pittston.

Unbeknownst to our parents, my older sisters and I followed along, all caught up in the excitement. What we failed to realize is that we followed the band all the way to Pittston Cemetery in the southern part of town and then didn’t know how to find our way back. I cannot remember the circumstances of how we eventually did but I do recall how worried my mom was. One thing for sure, our town was a very safe place in 1959.

I’ve been to all the local parades in recent years: Wyoming, Exeter/West Pittston, Dupont and each gave me those chills associated with any John Philip Sousa march. Mary Kay and I heard Dr. Juan DeRojas speak following the Exeter/West Pittston parade a few years ago. He had just returned from duty in Iraq. Had we been in town this year we would have made a point of being there to hear Judge Tom Burke, a Vietnam veteran.

We were even in Cooperstown, New York, (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) one year on Memorial Day to witness a parade with Hall of Famer and World War II veteran Bob Feller as grand marshal. We were in the audience the next day when Feller was asked how much better his records would be had he not lost those years to the war. His answer was priceless. “Young man,” he said, “I made a lot of mistakes in my life, but serving my country was not one of them.”

Feller was one of the honorary grand marshals for this year’s parade in D.C. and as he passed by I wanted to share that quote with Mr. Cosgrove but had a hard time overcoming the lump in my throat.

John P. Cosgrove is the Pittston native who showed up last summer bearing gifts. After serving in the media in Washington for 70 years, he sold his home in Bethesda, packed up his books and memorabilia from that home and from his office in the National Press Club, of which he was once president, and donated all of it – including several priceless items – to the Pittston Memorial Library. Realizing the library might have to expand to house the collection, he added a check for $50,000 to help with the project.

That’s how I got to know Mr. Cosgrove. Last year, he suggested Mary Kay and I join him and his lovely companion Georgia Jones in the capital for Memorial Day. We did. The experience was so (appropriately) memorable – including meeting Ernest Borgnine, like Mr. Cosgrove a Navy veteran, and Edith Shain, the nurse in the famous V-J Day “kiss” photo on Times Square – that this year we took the kids.

The experience was not wasted on them. You have no idea how that pleases me.

See, the thing I thought about a lot last weekend is how patriotism has grown to be un-cool. Criticizing the country we live in, that’s cool. Making fun of George W. Bush, as Brit Paul McCartney did last week in Washington, that’s cool. Saying you’d rather live in Canada, that’s cool. But getting a tear in your eye when Old Glory passes by? Who does that?

Well, my son and daughter did last weekend. And while I am as biased as I can be, they’re the two coolest young people I know. So cool that they were far more impressed with the three Medal of Honor winners sitting next to us at the parade than they were with movie star Gary Sinise (Lt. Dan of Forrest Gump) a couple of rows in front of them.

A day for memories, old and new