 So much is different at Rock Island National Cemetery this Memorial Day. Our community was not able to gather to put out the flags, crowds cannot be here for the official wreath laying, and big groups of family and friends cannot cluster around the graves of those they love, those who wore the uniform of our nation and perhaps gave their lives for it. This is hard and it doesn't feel right, but in the months since our nation began the COVID-19 lockdown handmade signs of optimism have started popping up in windows and on signs planted in lawns. Hope is not canceled, they read. Faith is not canceled. As I stand here today alone among America's fallen, it occurs to me that similar sentiments echo on these hallowed grounds. Service is not canceled. Sacrifice is not canceled. More than 33,000 men and women lay in this beautiful yet somber place. Those who raised their right hand to serve and the spouses who faithfully supported them. From our current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, all the way back to the American Revolution, these patriots put the welfare of the nation before their own. I want to tell you a story today about one of the heroes whose name is etched in the white granite here. Corporal Frederick Barracks was a native of the Quad Cities communities. He was tough as nails, a Golden Gloves heavyweight champion who fought professionally in California in the late 1930s and 1940s. He was so barrel-chested that he had to wear a size 50 sports coat, but he had a six-pack and 32-inch waist. His son described him politely as built like a brick outhouse. At the height of his boxing career in 1941, Fred Barracks fell in love with a beautiful Midwestern girl named LaRue. She told him she feared that boxing would scramble his brain. She was direct like that, and she only married him if he gave it up. So Fred returned from California and became one of the very first officers for the newly established Illinois Highway Patrol. The couple wed four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the war in Europe raged, Fred and 99 other Illinois Highway Patrolmen were drafted into the fight. Virtually all were assigned, and it makes sense to be in peace. Corporal Barracks entered service in February of 1943, arrived in Europe a few months later and fought under the mighty First Army Flag after America's assault on the Normandy in June of 1944. As the Allied troops pushed forward from Normandy to St. Low, from Paris to Market Garden, and the Ardennes to the Elbe, MPs like Corporal Barracks were given extraordinary duties. They supported the amphibious operation at Omaha Beach. They managed the hundreds of thousands of enemy prisoners of war. They performed route reconnaissance to keep equipment and supply lines moving. Drawing on the discipline of his boxing years, Corporal Barracks made an extraordinary soldier. Even as he longed for his family back home, he'd left LaRue with a baby boy and she bore their second son while he was gone. Twenty-one months into his service in April of 1945, it was clear the conflict was drawing to a close. The German war machine, once deemed unbeatable, had been devastated and demoralized by the Allies. One minute again, the American soldier had defied the odds in the waters of Normandy, in the hills of the Hurtegin Forest, in the wintery hell of the bulge. Corporal Barracks, like so many combat weary men, could finally envision walking back through his own front door. But his MP company was assigned one final task, to pull security for the Army engineers building massive cemeteries for America's dead. On April 5, 1945, Corporal Barracks was on guard near St. Evold, at which is today the Lorraine American Cemetery, our nation's largest World War II burial ground in Europe. He was shot and killed by a sniper and buried there in the very grounds he was protecting. He lays there still, along with more than 10,000 American heroes. 26 days after Corporal Barracks' death, Adolf Hitler would commit suicide. Eight days after that, Germany would sign an unconditional surrender. Of the 100 young Illinois highway patrolmen who deployed, 99 would come home safely. Corporal Barracks' wife, LaRue, never remarried. She raised their sons, never failing to tell the stories of the boxer, turned policeman, turned soldier. His sons carried on his legacy. Bradley the oldest would write the book, Quad City Sports Grates, and Dennis the Child he never met, would become the longtime police chief in Milan. He helped ensure a plaque memorializing his father is on display in the Illinois state police headquarters. In 1990, as LaRue Barracks lay dying, her sons asked if she wanted them to finally bring Frederick home. To rest beside her, his name would be on the headstone either way. The devoted widow didn't even consider it. No, she said, leave him over there in peace. On this memorial day, 75 years after victory in Europe, I leave you with that image. A European continent once war torn and blood stained at peace. Our allies, along with those we battle as mortal enemies, living in harmony. And the heroes who sacrifice everything, who didn't meet kids that would follow in their footsteps, who left wives that would never stop grieving, buried beneath simple, iconic white headstones. What a victory it was, and what a cost. It has been said that our flag does not fly because the wind blows it. It flies with the last breath of every man and woman who died protecting it. This memorial day weekend would normally be busy with parades and communities gathering in cemeteries and even backyard barbecues where we enjoy the freedoms others earned for us. But this year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as we're separated from our fellow citizens and praying for our nation to be victorious once again, I encourage us to use this isolation and quiet to pause. To pause and remember. Remember Corporal Barracks. Remember the ones who you know and love who gave their last full measure of devotion. And remember all of those of every generation who decided this great nation was worth everything they had to give. God bless the United States of America.