DENVER — It was a humbling and memorable day for James Cahalin and his family, who came to Fort Logan National Cemetery from their home in Parker as part of the Honor Project to pay their respects to several young men they never knew. And never will.
"It's extremely moving," Cahalin said.
The Honor Project was started by the family of Travis Manion, a Marine lieutenant from Pennsylvania who was killed in Iraq in 2007, and whose last words before leaving for his final deployment were "If not me, then who?"
Those words are now the motto of the Travis Manion Foundation. Volunteers for the foundation were at Fort Logan on Monday placing handcrafted wooden coins with the foundation's motto on the gravestones of soldiers whose loved ones couldn't make it to the cemetery for Memorial Day.
A total of 15 volunteers, including the Cahalin family, honored 26 fallen soldiers on Monday.
"It's just for us to honor our heroes," Cahalin said. "The message of 'if not me, then who?', building character in our youth and teaching them to give back is what resonated with my family."
The Honor Project started last year at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, and expanded this year to six other national cemeteries nationwide, including Fort Logan. The others were in Jacksonville, Florida; San Diego; Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Bucks County, Pennsylvania; and West Point, New York.
>The video below is from Saturday.
The Cahalins said their first honor project experience was a deeply meaningful one, and they promised to return. They said one of the graves they placed coins on was that of a young man who survived the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 but was then killed in action while serving in the military.
When asked why she and her husband brought their two young children to Fort Logan on Monday, Vanessa Cahalin, whose grandfather served in World War II and the Korean War, said, "I need them to grow up understanding that freedom comes with a cost, and here it is."
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