Southern Beaufort County is home to many who have served our country over the decades, and increasingly, it is home to active duty personnel. That brings much closer to home the sacrifices made by those in the service and their families. Beaufort County officials last year moved to make Veterans Day a county holiday. Public schools and other government offices are closed today. That is an important message to our children, who should understand and acknowledge those sacrifices. Don't let today become just another day at the beach.

For baby boomers whose age for service fell between the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may be their first close encounters with military actions. We are sending off our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, to the kinds of scenes and experiences we never will see.

But today we have a window into that world that previous generations did not have. Forget pen and paper. Soldiers pack their laptops and digital cameras as they head off to war. The resulting messages home are oddly comforting and disconcerting at the same time.

We can turn on our home or office computers to find messages from Iraq or Afghanistan, telling us about the mundane and the extraordinary, complete with photos of base camp or unusual sights, even memorials to fallen comrades. Telephone calls come once a week. We know of one soldier on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan who called his parents to tell them not to worry when the Army called to say he had been wounded. The Army call came later that day, and while it helped to already have heard their son's voice, it didn't lessen a parent's worry or the desire to see that soldier come home.

There are several ways to mark Veterans Day and say thanks to the men and women who are serving today in the military or who have served in the past.

This year, the Sun City Hilton Head Veterans Day celebration is dedicated to the soldiers and sailors who served in the Korea and Vietnam wars. Veterans who served in those conflicts are invited to the ceremony to be held at 10:30 a.m. at Town Center.

Hilton Head Island will unveil its new veterans memorial at the third annual Veterans Day ceremony at 10:15 a.m. at Shelter Cove Community Park.

The keynote speaker will be Lt. Col. Will Thomas, commanding officer of a Beaufort MCAS F-18 fighter attack squadron, who recently returned from Iraq. The ceremony closes with a U.S. Marine 21-gun salute and a flyover by four Marine fighter aircraft.

Today's ceremony will be the public unveiling of the new memorial at the park, which was paid for by a fundraising drive by the Hilton Head Island Military Veterans Coalition. The primary construction on the memorial is complete, but there is still work to do. The coalition hopes to hold a dedication ceremony for the completed project early next year.

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