Maybe your family will place flowers by a grave, or a wreath on a memorial.

Maybe you’ll think of the many who have died in conflicts from the Civil War to today, or maybe you will think of one servicemember lost.

I think often of one servicemember, on Memorial Days, on Veterans Days, and on random other days as well, and I never knew him.

I have met Allen R. Schindler Jr.’s mother. I have interviewed people involved in the effort to keep his killer imprisoned. I have reported on the Chicago veterans who annually honor Schindler, gathering at his grave in Evergreen Hill Cemetery in Crete, Ill.

Schindler joined the Navy in 1988, at the age of 18, and he expected to record a great many great adventures in a notebook he purchased on his tour. But by 1991, Schindler was enduring a hellish existence aboard the USS Belleau Wood. He was a gay man in an institution that tutored its recruits in homophobia, that by policy and practice said gays are not to be treated equally, are not fit to serve. At least two sailors, Airman Apprentice Terry Helvey and Airman Charles Vins, took that to mean not fit to exist.

Schindler died not in combat, not in war, but in a public rest room while on shore leave in Sasebo, Japan, on Oct. 27, 1992. Helvey punched, kicked, kneed and stomped Schindler. Airman Charles Vins mostly watched, but occasionally joined in the beating. The pathologist described Schindler’s injuries as like those suffered in a high-speed car crash or a low-speed airplane accident. Worse, the pathologist said, than a man being trampled by a horse. A witness said Helvey’s stomping was so violent it looked like a dance.

Schindler’s death took place prior to the adoption of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and I know the current policy cannot be blamed for the murder.

But the current policy is only a new version of a very old policy of banning gays from serving openly in the Armed Force. The arguments for keeping “don’t ask, don’t tell” are the same arguments employed to maintain the blanket ban on gay servicemembers that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was intended to soften.

Schindler knew the military mentality when it came to gay servicemembers, and he was afraid. Helvey knew the military mentality when it came to gay servicemembers, and he killed one.

To say that the military’s anti-gay policy was not a factor in Schindler’s death is like saying government-sanctioned segregation was not a factor in the slaying of blacks during the civil rights era.

This Memorial Day, our representatives and senators and president will make speeches about how men and women in the Armed Forces gave lives for the protection of the nation and its citizens.

But when will they seriously start talking about the servicemembers sacrificed under the discriminatory, misguided, dumb gay ban? Schindler lost his life and many, many more have lost their careers, in part, because of cowardice or incompetence in Washington.

Now is an opportune time — and the opportunity may not last long — to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Congress can and should act this session to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

But the Obama administration need not wait for Congress. The president has the authority to suspend discharges of gay servicemembers and he should execute that authority. He is the commander in chief.

Many servicemembers have died in U.S. conflicts, some posthumously earned medals for courage, valor and sacrifice and are remembered as great soldiers, fighters, strategists in the service of their country.

But it’s a sailor from Chicago Heights, Ill., I’m thinking mostly about, a sailor whose death exemplifies his country’s disservice to gay servicemembers.