Women have played a pivotal role in the U.S. military, from the Revolutionary War where they often served in the shadows to the present day where woman serve in combat roles, said Charles Morgan, commander of American Legion Post 171.

“Their contributions have paved the way for future generations, breaking barriers and challenging the norms,” Morgan said Monday at the Crystal Lake Memorial Day service.

[ See more photos from the Crystal Lake Memorial Day parade, Lake in the Hills Veterans Memorial dedication ]

This year, the women who served was a focus for the annual event.

“We honor those have have made the ultimate sacrifice and the women who broke barriers and the women whose hands healed wounds,” Morgan said.

One of those women veterans was invited to be the keynote speaker Monday. Erica Watson Borggren is a 1998 McHenry High School graduate who went on to West Point, graduating with a political science degree before going on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

After earning her masters degree at Oxford, Borggren’s service began. She went on to serve in Korea as company commander of the Medical Service Corps.

From 2008 to 2010, and with a toddler at home, she was called to serve on the staff of Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq.

Before that deployment, she wrote two letters – one for her husband and one for her son to open in his 18th birthday, Borggren said.

“Every service member has either done or considered” writing such a letter, Borggren said, calling it the “open only if” the writer has died letter.

On Memorial Day, it is right to remember not only the women and men who died in service to their country, but also the family members who had to open those letters, Borggren said.

When she served as the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs director under Gov. Pat Quinn, she went to many funerals for those killed in action in Iraq or Afghanistan, Borggren said. She met parents at those funerals “who were holding themselves together at the hardest moments in their lives.”

What others can do for those Gold Star families - the families who lost a loved one to war - is to show up, Borggren said. “Be present, bear witness and honor them.”

In Lake in the Hills Monday, the village rededicated its Veterans Memorial, which was installed in 2015 and was moved nearby for the construction of the new police station.