“Remember what it took for us to assemble here.”

Maj. Gen. Mark J. Schindler, adjutant general of Pennsylvania made this request of the crowd at Lycoming County’s Memorial Day ceremony at Veterans Memorial Park.

We agree with what Schindler asked. As we editorialized on May 21, we hoped each and every member of cur communities would take some time during the weekend to pay their respects for the sacrifices America’s veterans lost in wars made.

But it goes well beyond one day or one weekend.

Honoring our veterans should be our calling throughout the year. And we believe instilling that responsibility needs to begin early.

“It calls us to tech our young people of our history,” Frank Hartzel, Air Force veteran and chaplain for local Korean War veterans, said at the ceremony.

The hard work of the volunteers who created and continue to expand the Veterans Memorial Park on Wahoo Drive and other sites of remembrance throughout the county have graced our communities with many opportunities to instruct our children on these realities in a less academic, more direct way.

We hope families and schools embrace these occasions and avenues to give the children of Lycoming County and surrounding counties a sense of the selflessness, the dedication to the ideals and principles of liberty that our veterans displayed in serving. We hope our young people, as they grow, can respect the debt our society owes these men and women. We hope they understand that such a debt cannot be paid in an hour over a holiday weekend, or even one weekend out of the year.

It’s a debt we have to commit ourselves and our communities to in more fundamental, permanent ways.