As over 50 years of icy relations between the Unites States and the Cuba continue to thaw, Secretary of State John Kerry will go to Havana on Friday, Aug. 14, to redesignate the U.S. Interests Section to the U.S. Embassy Havana.

A press release informs while Kerry is in Havana, he will be meeting with senior Cuban officials.

The reestablishing of relations between the U.S. and the communist nation will be an event loaded with symbolism as well as sentimentality as the three Marines who were assigned the task of lowering the embassy flag back in 1961 will be accompanying Kerry to once again raise it.

Larry Morris, Mike East and James Tracy, the men who lowered the U.S. flag in Cuba, have expressed the maginitude of the event in a U.S. Department of State video.

Tracy recalled that around 300 Cubans stood before them on the fateful day.

“The sidewalks just parted,” he said, “They knew what we were gonna do.”

Morris seemed particularly overcome with emotions when he recalls leaving Cuba, saying he has been speaking to his wife about Cuba for 47 years.

“It’s coming back to where it should be,” he says, regarding the reconnected relationship between the two nations.

East says he never thought he would make it back: “I think about it every night now. Seeing that flag go up. It means a lot.”

Speaking with The New York Times, Tracy remembers the intensity of leaving Cuba in '61.

“Men and women would come up and say, ‘Don’t leave, don’t leave, we need you,’” Tracy said.

“Especially if they were trying to get out of the country.”