"I knew Travis."
      The 10-year-old has fond memories of his Bedford Summer Day Camp counselor back in 2002. "He used to teach us cooking. One day we were making pizza and he started putting flour on top of his (shaved) head. It was like a mountain of flour; we called him Mount Baldy... . He tossed water balloons to us, and everyone who caught one got a prize - from a huge bucket of chocolate chips."

      We all knew Lance Cpl. Travis R. Desiato, U.S. Marine Corps, didn't we? He was our husband and son and brother, student-athlete and camp counselor, kid next door and promises realized and unfulfilled. Of course we didn't have the privilege of knowing him up close, like his campers did. But we knew him as part of the fabric of this community.

      And so once again we are united in loss. Travis R. Desiato, 19, a Bedford High School senior when the war began, died Nov. 15 somewhere in the insanity of Falluja, amidst the Marines' battles against Iraqi insurgents.

      The Church of Saint Michael overflowed Sunday, as friends and neighbors and classmates and townspeople reached out to the Desiato Family, and to each other. "Here, today, is where everyone must be, to pray, to grieve, to remember, to sing, to speak peace," the Rev. John Gibbons asserted in his remarks at the vigil service.

      "This is a place of support and kindness. Just look around; you are all here for one another...crossing every boundary of faith and politics, age and outlook. Ours is a community united in sorrow and compassion."

      Gibbons, pastor of the First Parish Church on the Common, certainly felt the overwhelming sense ofdeja vu that permeated the sanctuary on Concord Road. Sunday's event was strikingly similar to the memorial service for Army Pfc. John Daniel Hart on a damp, dismal Sunday, Oct. 26, 2003.

      Again the church resonated with prayer and song and reminiscence and reflection, again with words of sorrow and inspiration. Again the throng adjourned to the plaza behind the church for a flag-folding and 21-gun salute. Again Rev. Gibbons concluded with poetry that is becoming all too familiar: "As long as we live, he, too, shall live. For he is part of us, as we remember him."

      Indeed, Bedford will remember. The town has a unique relationship with the military, a mature and worldly understanding of the role of the armed forces, and an appreciation for their people. This connection is as old as Bedford's colonial heritage and as familiar as the everyday landscape.

      Our town's most familiar symbol is a battle flag; every schoolchild knows its story. They ought to know; their school buildings honor Revolutionary War volunteers. Eleazer Davis was a lieutenant in the town militia; Job Lane was wounded in Concord on April 19, 1775 and his leg had to be amputated.

      Two military institutions within the town's limits have helped define Bedford's contemporary culture for more than 75 years. The Veterans Affairs Hospital on Springs Road has been a haven for thousands of men and women since 1928, not to mention their physicians, nurses, psychologists, dieticians and other caregivers. They have enhanced community life with volunteer opportunities, halfway houses and world-class research.

      Hanscom Air Force Base opened in 1941, as the country prepared to enter World War II. For more than six decades the installation has infused Bedford with the best and the brightest - engineers, scientists, highly trained professionals for whom community service is a reflex. They serve here, they send their children to high school here, shop and dine here, retire here and join the infrastructure of leadership and involvement.

      That helps explain why Bedford is a place where ROTC cadets are admired by their teenage peers, where veterans sponsor a huge Thanksgiving dinner for the elderly, where residents sit and listen each memorial day as a volunteer reads the names of every deceased resident who served in the military. Every one. It's a walk through American history, and a chance to contemplate those who helped write it.

      Bedford is a place where a high school student can join the Marine Corps right after graduation, and earn the respect and admiration of his peers. Travis Desiato was that Marine. He also was the cook at the Bedford Summer Day Camp. ""There is no way to practice what we are experiencing. It is simply a very sad time for all of us," Ilsa Gottlieb said at the service, targeting the young mourners in particular. Gottlieb is the founder and former director of the day camp; Travis began his career there as a three-year-old camper.

      Gottlieb, a teacher and administrator at Lt. Job Lane School, said she has been besieged with electronic messages all week from families who were touched by Travis Desiato. Those memories, she said, will continue to inspire and comfort. "He enabled us to be more joyful than any adult thinks he has the right to be."