Retired Col. Hank Steinhilber jumped with the Army's Black Knights parachute team and served at posts around the country.

But of all the momentsin his military career, Steinhilber said he remembers most meeting veterans who embodied the sacrifice that we commemorate on Memorial Day.Soldiers who were willing to put their lives on the line for the country, as he told Tamaqua residents at the borough's annual memorial ceremony Sunday.Like WWII veteran Lt. Frank Kappler, who was a navigator on the "Doolittle Raid," a mission to bomb Tokyo just a few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The 16 planes in the raid were only given enough fuel to get to Tokyo. The soldiers who weren't killed were taken captive."Some died. Many like Frank were captured. It was my honor to spend two days with Frank Kappler, a man who knew his chances of survival on that mission were small, and he said to me, 'It was my duty, and I wanted to fulfill it,' " said Steinhilber, who is now retired and working as a chaplain at a York County rest home.In an annual tradition, the Tamaqua and Marian High School bands and Tamaqua's first responders led the parade up to the Odd Fellows Cemetery on Monday morning for Tamaqua's Memorial Day ceremony.The Rev. Rodney Hall, in the invocation, asked God to guide people to use for good the freedom they are given through the sacrifice of our veterans.The ceremonyreflected on not only veterans lost in combat, but those who died recently long after serving their country. The names of veterans from Tamaqua who were lost last year - a number in the dozens - were read out, with a short drum roll following.Their family members were asked to hold a single balloon, which they then released upon the playing of taps.Steinhilber told the crowd about growing to understand the meaning of the holiday throughout his life. He recalled how the boys in his neighborhood would play soldier, but that the annual ceremony at the veterans monument still went over his head."The boy I was did not appreciate the ceremony in the cemetery. I didn't understand too well the prayers, the speeches, the firing of rifles in silence, or the haunting playing of taps," he said.But after going into the clergy, and eventually becoming a military chaplain, he said he knows firsthand the sacrifice that is made generation after generation to keep the country safe."Many of you served our nation in wartime, and we honor you. But we're also here to honor this day those who paid, in the battles which our nation fought, the ultimate price to keep us free," he said.