By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer

Before plunging into the world of presidential politics today, many delegates to the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention here took time Sunday morning to remember comrades who gave their lives in time of war.

In the same exhibit hall of the Cincinnati Convention Center where President Bush will address the convention today, about 3,000 delegates and their spouses gathered Sunday morning for a service of ritual and song in memory of those who died in America's wars.

The 105th Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States are holding their national covention in Cincinnati at the Albert B. Sabin Convention Center. (Enquirer photo/MICHAEL E. KEATING)

"The deeds of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, on land, on sea and in the air, are immortalized in the hearts of a grateful people," said Evelyn McCune of Blairstown, Mo., the VFW Ladies Auxiliary president, as she laid a wreath on a shrine onstage, meant to symbolize the graves of those who died in war.

For the VFW, which meets here through Friday for its 105th annual convention, the memorial service is a yearly practice, a solemn reminder of those who fell in battle.

Each of the thousands of veterans here for the convention knows someone who died in war.

Some delegates served in World War II, where 406,000 Americans died.

Many others served in Korea, which cost 36,000 men; or Vietnam, whose 58,000 dead are etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

Sunday morning, the roll of drums and the drone of bagpipes from the Veterans Memorial Pipe Band of Meadville, Pa., filled the exhibit hall, as a VFW honor guard posted colors and the group's sergeant-at-arms corps escorted Sunday's honored guests - the Gold Star Mothers and Wives, mothers and widows of war dead - down the center aisle.

The highest-ranking officers of the VFW laid red, white and blue flowers on the shrine, which was flanked by a white Christian cross and a Star of David.

The principal speaker, Col. Timothy Sonnenberg of Wauseon, a chaplain with the Ohio Air National Guard's 180th Fighter Wing, told of his nephew, a Marine company commander in Iraq, losing one of his gunnery sergeants in battle.

"His wife will pay the price for his sacrifice for a lifetime to come," Sonnenberg said.

Last year, Sonnenberg served on active duty in support of the U.S. peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.

Sunday, he told the veterans of his travels through Europe and the gratitude that ordinary Europeans - particularly the French - had for what American soldiers did to liberate them in World War II.

"I know the French are not particularly popular with a lot of Americans because they did not support us in Iraq," Sonnenberg said.

"But I can tell you that they remember the sacrifice our fighting men made to make them free."

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E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com