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Do not apologize for your post to Free Republic. We are what makes this site great and it was our fathers that made us that way.

Mine passed away this March 4, also from a stroke. He was 89 1/2. When you are that old, half matters.

He was buried in his Air Force uniform, Lt. Col., and I have the flag that lay on his coffin. We had full military honors, thanks to a niece who was in the Army at the time.

When they hand you the flag, they say...on behalf of the President of the United States......and end something about "your loved one". I just lost it in between those two phrases.

All three of us kids spoke at the funeral. It was something each of us felt compelled to do...the youngest one at the last minute.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house.

My dad wanted to be cremated and buried at sea. We did that, but the burial at sea was special. While at the Pentagon, my dad was the project officer for the patrol gunboat hydrofoils (PGH-1 Flagstaff and PGH-2 Tucumcari). The skipper of the current generation of guided missile hydrofoils lives next door to my sister. His boat is a 2nd generation from my dad's project. The skipper of the guided missile hydrofoil took my dad's ashes out to the Coronado islands on his boat. My nephew played taps on his trumpet before the ashes were dropped in the water.