Memorial Day: Why we keep it

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the traditional beginning of summer (for a little over 40 years now). Monday is Memorial Day. Public and private swimming pools open, and backyard cookouts (in Kansas City, cooking out and barbecuing are quite different things) with plenty of beer are in abundance. Memorial day has broadened to the idea of a day to honor all our military serving anywhere in the world. And so, I honor my daughter Martha, proudly serving as a Sergeant Veterinary Technician in the U.S. Army, caring for the animals that work, the pets military families love, and the livestock indiginous people around the world depend on. I'm so proud of you, sweetheart. I can't express it properly.


I honor her husband, Craig, for his service in the U.S. Army and Purple Heart in Iraq, and his continued service with the Army Reserve.

But Memorial day began in 1966 with the idea that Americans would honor their war dead and decorate their graves to keep in remembrance the sacrifice they made. All politics aside, I wish to honor those who gave their lives so that I might live mine as I wish.

My father fought in the south Pacific in WWII, and he will not speak of it to this day. Following the war, he joined the Army and was part of the Occupation of Germany for six years. He still speaks German as if he were a native (give him a couple of days and natives ask him for directions). We went to Dachau and he would not go in with us, choosing instead to go into town for coffee. He'd been there before it had been cleaned up and the memories were far too fresh after 60+ years.

We think of our war heroes as old men like my father. But the truth is far different. I rarely thought of this until I saw this quote just today:

It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country
in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our
mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave
and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, they gave up two
lives -- the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they
died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers.
They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for
their county, for us. All we can do is remember.

-- Ronald Wilson Reagan
Remarks at Veteran's Day ceremony
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington, Virginia, November 11, 1985

And so for all American war dead, defending our country or another, regardless of political ideology, I say "Thank you." You died too soon. In whatever action you fought and died, against whatever foe, for whatever reason, you did your duty. And I am free to write this.
Thank you.