Most of us wake up in the morning and head off to work or take our children to school. We do laundry, take out the trash, go grocery shopping.

Maybe on the weekends we take a drive or spend time with our families.

But whatever activities we choose to fill our daily routine, we can thank our country’s veterans for giving us the opportunity to live freely.

So with all these freedoms we are afforded, why does it seem we wait for special holidays to remember the brave men and women who risked their lives — or paid the ultimate price — for us?

Veterans, as well as active service men and women, should be in our thoughts and have our gratitude year round.

Last week, the county commissioners took a step in the right direction by naming bridges in honor of two of Lawrence County’s fallen heroes — Theodore Ullum “Tuc” Church, who was killed in Iraq on Memorial Day 2007 at the age of 32, and Donald Ray Blankenship, who died on July 7, 1968, at the age of 19 in Vietnam.

Church and Blankenship, as well as some other Lawrence Countians, paid the ultimate price for us, so every time you see the memorial signs on County Road 1 in Burlington and County Road 59 at Big Branch Creek, say a thank you.

For if it wasn’t for them and other veterans, the comfortable lives we live might have been just a dream.