Welcome to the American Story. Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful

and worthy of our love. On Memorial Day as on all days, we honor and mourn those who have given their lives for our freedom.

To keep the country worthy of their sacrifices is our work.

It makes us better to do it, and it will always need doing.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

Wishing you and yours a blessed Memorial Day.

I call this one.

Hallowed Ground. Where do you go in Los Angeles on Memorial Day?

Los Angeles, Lottis Land, City Without a Memory.

It's true that memory rests lightly on LA, but turn east from Suppulveda Boulevard just north of

Wilshire onto Constitution Avenue and you immediately receive from the goings and

comings of the eternal present, and enter a sanctuary of remembrance.

The main gate is opened each morning at 530.

Visit on an ordinary weekday morning, and there isn't a soul stirring except you and one or two of the

groundsmen.

The traffic of the 405 freeway will continue to hum behind you.

But a sacred local silence takes you in.

To the company of over 85,000 veterans in their families,

some from as far back as a civil war, who rest in peace here at the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

Sometime back I had the pleasure of meeting the then director of the cemetery, Cynthia

Delafuente Nunez, who seems to have been born for the job.

She grew up in the Philippines and inherited a fondness and gratitude for American veterans from her father, Carmelito Delafonte, who told her from her earliest years of the American liberation of the Philippines in World War II.

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