The military’s changing face and the need to teach younger generations greater respect were twin themes during Monday’s service at Suffolk’s Cedar Hill Cemetery.

Guest speaker Lt. Col. Jennifer Romero said she attended a Norfolk Tides baseball game recently when, during the Pledge of Allegiance, a young man with his pants hanging down began a cellphone conversation with his girlfriend.

“It was by that point that my blood pressure went through the roof,” said Romero, who is based at North Suffolk’s Joint and Coalition Warfighting Center.

“Thankfully my 3-year-old was in my lap, or I would have ripped him a new one.”

Such experiences, Romero said, show that “it’s up to us to take that opportunity to teach that young man a little respect and a little appreciation” for the nation and men and women that serve it.

Romero asked the gathering of 70 or 80 to always remember the seven Suffolk citizens who lost their lives in Vietnam, and the approximately 6,500 men and women nationwide that have perished during the post-September 11conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We have lost 20 people in Afghanistan in the past month alone,” she said. “The month’s not over.

“You don’t see it on the TV anymore — that’s why it’s up to you and me to teach people respect for America’s military.”

Romero noted how the Department of Defense has gotten smaller – 31-percent smaller since 1990, despite the War on Terror and the new cyber battlefield, she said.

She tells her subordinates, she said, to “make sure you have a civilian resume, make sure it’s up to date and it’s posted on LinkedIn.”

With budget cuts set to defense spending by almost 20-percent over the next decade, “things have changed a lot,” Romero said.

She also talked about the new emphasis on building coalitions with other nations before engaging an enemy, resulting, for instance, in American soldiers serving alongside Germans — something difficult for many Word War II veterans to imagine.

Returning to the Tides game, Romero asked folks to take it upon themselves to teach younger people about the sacrifices our men and women in uniform have made.

“Start by politely telling that kid two rows in front to pull up his pants and put his hand on his heart,” she said.

Bob Grady, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2581 adjutant, asked the gathering to reflect on the price of freedom.

“We have people sacrificing right now to protect our freedom,” Grady said. “Freedom is far from free; it costs dearly.”

The service also included flag-raising and wreath-laying ceremonies, and at its conclusion, ladies from the Constantia Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution walked across the cemetery grounds to a memorial bench for the Revolutionary War.

There they reflected on the sacrifices made during the conflict that originally won America’s freedom.

Suffolk’s Greg Brown said his father, a veteran, is buried at Cedar Hill.

“Since I never served myself, I feel a bit of an obligation to come out and recognize those that did serve,” he said.

“My older brother is retired from the Navy, and I always send him a text on Memorial Day saying ‘thanks.’”