Remembering our heroes an easy task
For Americans, freedom is a way of life, a legacy fought for and left behind by our nation’s founders.
Such freedom has proven costly. It has cost many fine soldiers their lives. It has cost many parents their sons and their daughters. It has cost many children their fathers.
Throughout our history, the rights and liberties guaranteed by our Constitution and cherished by our nation have been paid for at a heavy toll – Americans laying down their lives to ensure our continued freedom.
Tomorrow, on Memorial Day, it is with the utmost respect and honor we pay tribute to those who have given their lives to protect the United States and everything this great country represents.
Memorial Day was first known as Decoration Day and celebrated May 30. This observed Memorial Day has long since been abandoned in favor of what’s become a new American tradition: three-day weekend.
By moving Memorial Day to the last Monday of May, it gives the holiday somewhat of a commercial appeal. A three-day holiday is, after all, a great chance to gather up the family and experience a fun-filled weekend.
While it is fulfilling to spend quality time with the family, that’s far from the meaning of Memorial Day. Many American souls have been sacrificed in war. Many tomorrows have been forfeited.
Many men and women – most just beginning their lives – died so our nation could maintain freedom. Old Glory does not wave by accident. It is the selfless acts of those who died fast and those who died ever so slowly who protected the freedom we all experience.
Tomorrow, all across this great nation, friends and loved ones will gather over graves, witness to those who gave more than anyone should be required to relinquish. The proud Americans who died in war are more than just numbers.
There have been mothers’ tears, enough to fill an ocean to overflow. Sweethearts, broken hearted, reading telegrams. Sons and daughters, many unborn, wakening at birth to a devastated family suffering from a victim of war.
It is those hardships we have been fortunate to avoid, for the most part, in recent years. Americans have so much, it’s easy to take things – like freedom – for granted.
Many of our citizens have never known a person who has died in service. Most of our children, teen-agers and young adults have no idea how it feels to lose thousands and thousands of soldiers in war.
That’s why the significance of Memorial Day can’t be allowed to fade. For without knowledge, they may end up believing all these marvelous liberties came without circumstance, without blood, without death.
In the words of President John F. Kennedy, “A nation reveals itself not only by the citizens it produces, but also by the citizens it honors, the citizens it remembers.”
On nation needs to halt and stop our fast-paced lives long enough to pay tribute to the heroes of this country. We have not come so far with our computers and technological miracles to become crass. We still need respect.
Memorial Day may take many of us to cemeteries across the nation – the final resting places of our fallen soldiers. It is a day when the living remember and salute those who served our nation in uniform and who died.
Remembrance is a simple task. We cannot turn our backs on these bygone descendants.
Memorial Day offers us this opportunity. It’s the opportunity to pay our respects and the opportunity to educate our young ones about the meaning of sacrifice and all that’s been given to solidify this great nation.