Sarah Kruger and her brother were walking along in the center of the march, and they were going by these rows of flag-draped caskets made for the parade by a guy in Williamsburg who doesn't like death. There were hundreds of these caskets being carried in South American heat up Seventh Avenue. At 34th Street, before the march turned downtown, a man carrying one end of the casket looked at Sarah Kruger, this slim 20-year-old college student, and said, mopping his face with one hand, "Could you give us a hand? I'm a little tired."

"Sure," she said.

She took the back of the casket. She tapped her brother Winston. He went to the front, where the man carrying it gladly retired.

"It is the least we can do," she said to her brother.

They carried it along in the heat and with the rows of other caskets.

She said she lived downtown and that she was a junior at Washington University in St. Louis. That she majors in education and political science.

"It is important for us to honor people who don't get any," she said. "Nobody seems to care about them."

Her long hair looked auburn in the sun. She had on a pink shirt and black pants. There was a serious look across her face because that is how she felt about what she was doing in this massive parade in the great city.

She put her hand on the flag again, but the flag was in place.

Right in front of her, Ed Ott, 65 now, his white hair standing out, said he was honored to carry the casket. With him was his wife, Karin. He said he had been walking along Sixth Avenue and he saw all these caskets lined up and he asked somebody who was going to carry them and a man said that he would be fine and he and his wife took up a casket and they carried it for over four hours in the sun.

"I'm carrying this because they die for Bush's lies," he said.

Near him was Sofia Van Leeuwen, 22, who works at Viking Press. She had heard about the caskets in the days before the march and she said she was not up for being a pall bearer. But then yesterday, when she saw all the caskets before the march, she went right up to one and tied her long hair and started holding one end on the long walk.

And as she went along all the blocks in the heat, Sarah Kruger felt something coming from the people watching her on the sidewalk. They were silent and then over the blocks the silence became intense. Now she could see that it was impossible for anybody watching not to feel that these caskets were real.

"It is the effect we should have," she said. "People should feel this."

"And you."

"Yes, I do."

As she carried her casket, she shifted it in her hands. "Is it getting heavy?" she was asked.

"No," she said, uncertainly.

The casket was supposed to be of cardboard but the day and the time and these crystals in the air called of a young life that we owe. Some nice young guy got shot dead and left broken hearts all over the place. And whether one of them was really in that casket now or it was all an illusion, the casket felt different to Sarah Kruger.

Now she came to 20th and Broadway, where the street sign was listed as "Theodore Roosevelt Way."

Of course something had to put that sign there and have it noticed on this day. For it was Roosevelt who in the end seems to have known so much and so many of the governments that followed so little.

And here, as Sarah Kruger passed under the street sign, were the words Roosevelt thought should be commonplace in his country:

"To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, it is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American people."

And you could hear in the air his cry for lovely young Sarah Kruger: as she passed under his name carrying a casket: "Bully!"

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

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