It's a safe bet that more than a few brand-new grills have been dragged out of cardboard boxes and assembled for the Memorial Day weekend.
But Dennis Biggs' thoughts this holiday turn to other boxes, ones that loom in his mind though thousands of miles and decades away.
"When I was flying," the Vietnam War fighter pilot said, "when somebody was shot down or missing, the personnel people would get all their personal effects and load them in a box to ship back to the families.
"At one time, we had eight boxes outside our Quonset hut — and there were only 16 people in there," said Biggs, who pulled three tours in Vietnam with the United States Air Force. "So I lost a lot of buddies."
That experience, and others like it during a nearly three-decade career flying warplanes in the Air Force, is the central tenet of the keynote address Biggs is crafting for Greenville's Memorial Day observance Monday.
"Freedom is not free" serves as both the apt title of his speech and Biggs' deeply held dictum.
"People seem to be forgetting the price that's been paid for freedom," the retired the 68-year-old colonel said Monday. "You'll see that at the ceremony."
The Greenville resident predicted there will be several empty chairs at the Town Common ceremony.
Two men who happen to share the colonel's last name won't be part of that pattern when the day dawns Monday.
Biggs' two sons, Mitch, 43, and Rodney, 40, followed in their dad's footsteps — or vapor trails, as the case may be — earning their Air Force pilot wings.
Mitch and his dad at one point were the only combat-ready father and son flying the F-15 in the Air Force, Dennis Biggs said. When son Rodney graduated from Air Force ROTC at East Carolina University in 1988, he and his dad became the first father-son grads of that program, Rodney said.
"I knew I wanted to fly ever since I was in my mother's womb — I was just born with it," Rodney said. He spoke via cell phone as he negotiated New York City traffic after landing the plane he flies for American Airlines. Now a major, he continues to fly in the Air Force Reserves.
"Obviously, you remember the friends that you had," he said of fellow pilots who died in the service of their country. One of his buddies crashed while training in Jackson Hole, Wyo.; another, the co-pilot of United Flight 93, died when the plane crashed after being taken over by terrorists on 9/11. He was a warrior to the end, Rodney said of his friend.
"You know these guys. You get a close bond with them," he said.
Memorial Day remains an important occasion for the military flyer, though Rodney acknowledges that people removed from the armed services environment might not give it as much thought.
"It depends on the crowd you associate yourself with," he said. "With me still in the military, it's pretty vibrant."
Rodney passes that ethos to his children, admonishing them "that life isn't forever, and ... that there were friends of mine who have made the sacrifice, and that freedom isn't free."
After serving 14 years, Rodney's brother, Mitch, left the Air Force for a corporate career with an electronics retailer.
Once Mitch entered high school, he began looking toward the horizon at possible careers. "The office view from a cockpit would be very appealing," he thought.
Mitch graduated from the Air Force Academy and was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida after pilot training. That's when he said the reality of edge-of-the-envelope military aviation started to hit home.
"By the time I got to my operational squad at Eglin, and had been there a couple of months, I had already lost two roommates in flying accidents," Mitch said.
Memorial Day offers Mitch a time to reflect on those he's known and some he hasn't who won't come home to their families ever again.
"I'm grateful that we take time out to pause for it," he said. However, he added, "For me, it's a lot like Mother's Day; I appreciate my mom every day," but on the holiday, "I go the extra mile."
"I'm a patriot through and through, and this is just a special event to pause," he said of Memorial Day.
Serving with other men and women in the military provides "a camaraderie that does not exist in many aspects of the civilian world," Mitch added. "I firmly believe I would not be where I am today in my life if I had not had an opportunity to serve my country and understand what a privilege it is to live here."
He wants to see some kind of service, not necessarily the military, "where young people can do something abroad and come back and understand what they have."
Some of the Biggs' patriarch's fellow warriors will never be able to make that comparison. And those who survived often paid a high price, Dennis said, noting his former flight commander in Vietnam was shot down and spent seven years in a POW camp.
The man finally came home.
"But damaged forever, of course," he said.
And the toll can't be counted only in the loss of those who served.
"We've lost almost a million people securing the freedom of this country, depending on what conflicts you count," Dennis said. "Every one of those affected lots of people."
T. Scott Batchelor can be contacted at sbatchelor@coxnc.com and 329-9567.
