Denton County Veterans Service Officer Roger Cortez said it himself in Friday’s paper: Armed Forces Day is not exactly the Big Bopper of American holiday observances. The banks don’t close; the mail gets delivered, and we can’t remember when we last heard an Armed Forces Day speech.

Cortez is trying to change that, and good for him.

At 10 a.m. today, Mayor Perry McNeill is scheduled to read an Armed Forces Day proclamation at the VFW post at 909 Sunset St. It is likely to be a short ceremony, and a quiet one, but that does not bother us. What is important is that this good town is once again taking notice of the contributions made by our armed forces, of the sacrifices made by the men and women who have served in them.

There are plenty of reasons, we suppose, why Armed Forces Day has been shouldered to the rear of the busload of American observances. For one thing, it comes within weeks of Memorial Day, another, older and more established observance that honors our fallen military men and women and, tangentially, all other military personnel as well. Second, it is a sort of cobbled-together observance: Each armed service — Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps — used to have its own “day,” but President Harry S. Truman consolidated them all in 1949.

(The Marines, semper fidelis, said thanks but no thanks, and they still observe Marine Corps Day on Nov. 10, the day in 1775 when they were formed by the Continental Congress to aid in naval operations in the Revolutionary War. You’ve got to love the Gyreens.)

It has always been important that Americans recognize and honor its armed forces, but it is especially important today, when American men and women in uniform are fighting and dying in a land far away.

 Denton has not been left untouched by that fighting and dying. Ernest Wayne Dallas Jr. of Denton, an infantryman, was killed in Baghdad in July 2005 when the Bradley fighting vehicle in which he was riding struck an improvised explosive device.

Our own Alpha Company, First Battalion, 112th Armor of the Texas National Guard, served more than a year in Iraq. We have reason to think of these men today, and of the services in which they serve and have served.

We have no problem with a quiet, muted celebration. In fact, we believe that on this Armed Forces Day, as on Memorial Day, the most important observances will come in the hearts of those who pause for a moment to remember these guardians of our country, and who silently thank them for their service.