By Sally Torbey
About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the ...
(More)
About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the challenges of having a satisfying family life in a community where parents set a high bar for themselves, their children, and the schools and organizations that educate and socialize them. I grew up in the Midwest, attended a small liberal arts college on the East Coast and graduated from medical school in Chicago. I left a pediatric residency to care for our then infant son and spent the next dozen years contentedly gestating and lactating while having four more children. My husband grew up in the Middle East, came to the US for graduate school and works in high tech. Our eldest son graduated from a UC, and after working in the Middle East for a few years, now attends law school in NYC. Our eldest daughter graduated from a Midwestern Big Ten University and is a journalist in Texas. Our middle child studies engineering at a UC. The youngest two girls are in middle and high school in PAUSD. We are celebrating 20 years as PAUSD parents! I volunteer in the public schools, our church, and scouting.
(Hide)
View all posts from Sally Torbey

Teenage boys value sleep, but for more than a dozen years my sons, and my husband, have been waking up at dawn on Memorial Day weekend to join their Boy Scout troop at Golden Gate National Cemetery. I accompanied them this morning, as an event that gets them all out of bed so early without complaint on a holiday weekend was not to be missed.
Golden Gate National Cemetery occupies 161 acres of rolling hillside in San Bruno. This morning the fog was thick and wet and initially obscured the most distant rows of white marble gravestones that fan out in every direction, over 115,000 graves in all. Hundreds of Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, veterans and civic organization volunteers gathered at the cemetery with the goal of decorating each grave with a flag to honor and remember the veterans buried there.
The event began with the raising of the flag, "The Star-Spangled Banner", and the bugle call of "Taps". Congresswoman Jackie Speier addressed the crowd, reminding us that each grave upon which we would place a flag was that of a hero who had served our country. A couple whose son had served and died in Afghanistan in 2006 thanked everyone for being there as well. I am sure every parent present was as moved as I was that a family who had lost their son could be thanking us with such grace and sincerity, when it was we who owed them so much.
The scoutmaster serving as master of ceremonies, who first attended the event in 1956 as a Cub Scout, instructed us on the specifics of flag planting and we all dispersed to our assigned areas. Over the next hour and a half, the cemetery was transformed to a vast sea of flags flapping in the breeze, each flag a vibrant reminder that our veterans are gone, but their sacrifices are not forgotten.