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Marvin Hume's final Memorial Day

For four decades, the World War II vet honored deceased veterans by raising their casket flags at Sunset Beach. On Monday, his own flag will be raised.

Marvin Hume (right) helps Michael Teiper and son, Jonathan, fold a flag in 2008 that belonged to
Michael’s father, who served in WWII. Hume spent four decades performing similar ceremonies. (ELIZABETH ROBERTSON / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Marvin Hume (right) helps Michael Teiper and son, Jonathan, fold a flag in 2008 that belonged to Michael’s father, who served in WWII. Hume spent four decades performing similar ceremonies. (ELIZABETH ROBERTSON / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)Read more

MEMORIAL Day was founded to honor those who died while in service to the country.

Marvin Hume, a wounded World War II vet, didn't die while serving on a battlefield or warship. He died after serving America in an extraordinary way over a span of four decades in lovely Cape May Point, N.J.

Each morning, from Memorial Day to Sept. 30, Hume would raise the casket flag of a deceased military member. At sunset, in a simple and deeply moving public ceremony, he'd lower the flag, help the deceased soldier's family refold it into a perfect triangle and hand it back to them.

"You know he's here with us, right?" he'd tell them.

Yes, they'd nod, often through tears, he certainly is.

He performed this ritual about 6,000 times over 40 years for the families of veterans who served in Europe and the Pacific theater, in Korea and Vietnam, in Iraq and Afghanistan. He honored first responders who died on 9/11 and those whose service quietly unfolded domestically on land or sea.

If anyone deserves to be honored this Memorial Day, it's Hume, who was 94 when he passed away peacefully on April 25 from cardiac illness. And so his loved ones will run his own casket flag up the flagpole on Monday and lower it as the sun sinks into the Delaware Bay to the haunting notes of "Taps."

"We knew it was inevitable that the day would come when the ceremony would be for him," says daughter Sharon Bloom.

Hume has another daughter and two sons; a third son is deceased. The siblings own and operate Sunset Beach, a compound of three gift shops, a grill, a miniature golf course and rental cottage at Cape May Point.

"It will be very emotional," says Bloom. "But if we didn't do it, he'd find a way to come back and knock us on the side of the head."

Hume's story is wonderful not just because he was a wonderful man - generous, humble, loving and patriotic. It's wonderful because it illustrates how repeatedly doing one decent and simple thing, over time, creates a profound legacy.

"Those services were very meaningful and important to him, every single one of them," says Patricia Wolf, his life companion of 30 years (Hume was divorced). "Each time, when he handed the flag back to the family, he would get a lump in his throat. He was absolutely sincere."

Hume didn't set out to become a legend. He just wanted to honor the memory of two soldiers - friends from Collingswood, his hometown - who were killed at Pearl Harbor. He'd enlisted in the Navy the moment he learned of their deaths. He himself nearly lost his foot to shrapnel wounds and was nominated for the Purple Heart.

He declined the honor.

"I didn't want any part of an award for what I considered at that time as a scratch, and that applied to a lot of guys," he said modestly in a 2014 issue of All Hands Magazine, a Web publication written for and by U.S. sailors.

After the war, he married and started a family and became an engineer in the Midwest. He moved back east to run a store on the Atlantic City Boardwalk before buying Sunset Beach from an Army vet who took a shine to Hume. The property is a magical spot where the milky pink sunset sparkles off the quartz "diamonds" of the beach's pebbly sand.

The prior owner of Sunset Beach had conducted a nightly flag service accompanied by a scratchy recording of Kate Smith singing "God Bless America."

Hume planned to continue the tradition in honor of the friends who'd died in Pearl Harbor, but decided to expand it to all service people no matter the cause of their death.

He placed a notice in the paper, asking to borrow veterans' casket flags to flutter over Sunset Beach. He was inundated with offers, and that was that. Today, the honor is so popular among veterans' families, the schedule fills within moments of being posted online.

"Our flag calendar went live on May 1 at 9 a.m. and by 9:02:20 was filled," says daughter Sharon Bloom in wonder. "We were blown away."

The flag is raised at sunrise and flies all day (weather permitting). That evening, about a half-hour before sunset, a recorded announcement via loudspeaker summons attendees to the flagpole and requests that all stand quietly - children, too - in respect to the dead and deference to the flag.

A member of the Hume family then reads a short bio of the deceased veteran being honored, describing their military service, where they served, how they died. Three recordings are then played - Kate Smith's "God Bless America" and "The National Anthem," and "Taps" - as the colors are lowered. The family then helps to fold the flag, and everyone quietly departs.

"It's incredibly beautiful," says Judy Faunce of Wilmington, Del. She'd long vacationed with her family in Cape May but did not experience the ceremony until Sept. 18, 2004 - the first anniversary of the death of her son, U.S. Army Capt. Brian Faunce, in Afghanistan. That day, as Brian's casket flag waved at Sunset Beach, Judy felt such peace she vowed to return annually to honor him.

Well before the ceremony begins, she sets aside "quiet time" for herself and her late son.

"I take all the letters I have from Brian, and I just sit under his flag on the beach and read all of them again," says Faunce, who is active with Gold Star Mothers, the veterans-service organization of moms who have lost children in the service of country. "It has become my tradition."

Faunce's tradition can endure for as long as the Hume family owns Sunset Beach, says Sharon Bloom. Their dad's love for the flag runs in their blood.

"We had a very patriotic father. We knew his feelings concerning his Naval service, his country, his love of American history. It was instilled in us," she says. "We know how much this meant to him. It means the same to us."

On Monday, I hope their father makes himself felt to the people who loved him best, at the place he loved the most.

As his flag flies above them, may it whisper to their hearts, "You know I'm here with you, right?"

Phone: 215-854-2217

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