When the news broke that Whitney Houston had passed away, my instinct was to post the video of her 1991 Super Bowl performance of our national anthem on Facebook, with the simplest of epitaphs: RIP.  See, as a kid, I woke up early every day, walked across the park and used what I thought of then as my VIP status to get into the school office before it even opened, where I collected, reverently unfolded and raised the flag. After the flag was up, I would put on my drum major gear (furry hat included) and tool my middle school band in and around the cul-de-sacs of my neighborhood; sometimes taking them through the paces of the same anthem Whitney performed beyond parallel.