 The annual Memorial Day event included a presentation of the wreath,
a three-shot volley outside the hall and the playing of taps at the
back of the room by Randy Schrader.C. Wayne Schrader was the
master of ceremonies and turned the floor over to Pastor Mark
Thompson of Zion Lutheran Church in Lincoln. The pastor gave the
invocation and benediction and was also the special guest speaker
for the day.
Thompson's address to the audience was heartfelt and stirring. It
is as follows:
(Copy of text)
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed
on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand
Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first
observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of
Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.
On May 30, 1895 Oliver Wendell Holmes
delivered a Memorial Day speech to the graduating class of Harvard
titled The Soldiers Faith. In that speech he notes that duty and
devotion have quite gone out of style and love of country is an old
wives tale. It was after the Civil War and before World War One.
Holmes was right and he was wrong. Money and ease was the order of
the day. But barely twenty years later the Doughboys answered the
call and the Rainbow Division went to Europe.
Leading up to Memorial Day this year I
thought about today. I listened to the television. Memorial Day,
stop in and get a deal on your car. Memorial Day, get you hot dogs
and grill out with your friends. Memorial Day, the appliance sale is
on. Not one word of Memorial Day, remember the fallen in war. I
suppose that things slide, they lose their original meaning as more
and more get on the band wagon. These days it seems that everyone
wants to fly their American flag at half staff when they feel like
it. Blue stars are for mother's of service members not for anyone,
who has a relative in the service, but "They're neat and I want one
too." Heaven forbid we see the day when the Gold Star is dishonored
in such a way.
Today is not a day to honor all
military members, we have Veterans Day for that. On Veteran's Day we
raise our arms and show our scars and tell our stories. Today is not
the day to remember anyone who has died, not that it's wrong, but
it's not what Memorial Day is about. Memorial Day is a Day to
remember and honor those who have given their lives in service to
our nation, those who have died in the line of duty.
I look out and I see mostly older
citizens here and that's Ok. It's OK because you are the age to
remember, to look back and ponder might have beens, to remember old
times and old friends. The young veterans are with their families
loving and enjoying their children, playing with, holding and
hugging them. Those who picnic are enjoying the very thing our war
dead have given them. But you are here.
When I look out here I remember my
grandfather; WWII Air Corps Veteran, ball turret gunner on B-24's,
he flew bombing raids over Ploesti, Romania, flew over Europe, flew
the Berlin Air Lift delivering coal to the people of that city. He
rarely talked to wild eyed glory seeking grandsons. Twice he did and
I do not forget.
He spoke of taking off from England
when the plane in front of them blew up and they just went around it
and took off, "After that day," he said, "I couldn't get into the
ball until I saw the landing gear go up." Then one day after I had
returned from Iraq sitting in his living room I plied him with
questions. (Couldn't let the family history go away without being
recorded you know.) He was watching a Cardinal game about four
inches from his large screen TV. That blind man looked me straight
in the eye and said, "I've spent fifty years trying to forget that
damn war, why do you want to know about it!" Then later with a tear
dripping from his blue eyes he simply said, "I held my friends while
they died." That's Memorial Day. I've walked with my brother, a
member of the 82nd Airborne Div. across the bricks
leading to the 82nd Museum. As we walked to the door he
passed over and paused at the names of the men. "I knew him," my
brother said, "He was my friend." That's Memorial Day. While working
in a hospital in Balad, Iraq I saw the dead come from Fallujah, and
today I remember them. That's Memorial Day.
[to top of second column] |
Most of you are the age to remember
those who died. Some of you held your friends while they died. You
do remember Blue stars and Gold stars. You remember your parents
going to someone else's home to comfort them. You know the widows
and orphans and that's why you are here today to remember those who
gave their lives when their country called. They went because they
believed. They went because their history teachers told them of
their forefather's sacrifices and now they knew it was their turn to
fight for our freedoms. They went for many reasons including the
higher virtues.
What we do, our actions, flow from
what we believe. What we believe comes from outside of us, it is
external. The greater virtues, the greater values are the ideals
that transfer us from childhood to adulthood. There are virtues that
lead a man to die for another man.
A man hearkened to the cry of Paul
Revere, a man, "who that day would be first to fall lying dead
pierced by a British musket ball." A young man dies at Gettysburg,
that another family may be treated as human beings created in God's
image and not sold as cattle. It is the reality of service above
self that led young men to stand against Fascism and Imperialism and
die in the skies above Ploesti, spill their blood in Europe and the
Pacific both on land and sea. This dedication led to frozen bodies
as the Maries held their ground at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
These virtues held fast in the jungles of Vietnam. They still hold
today in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Americans die so a little girl
can simply go to school.
Our children still die in foreign
lands, they die for their friends, they die for their battle buddies
and for the virtues of loyalty, duty and honor. But they still sign
up for the higher virtues. We still "hold these truths to be
self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their
creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life
liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
These rights flow from the Creator,
from God, the Holy Triune God. When we as a nation lose faith in
God, where that God is rejected or torn away men will still kill
men, they will kill in fear and hate and in lust for power but no
longer will they be there to give their lives for another's freedom,
for another human, for love.
Pray then we don't let go of God, for
loss of God leads to the loss of the higher virtues. We don't want
dead sons or heaven forbid, dead daughters. We want no more caskets,
no more Gold Stars. We pray that no more would free men have to
stand "between loved homes and the war's desolation," but still they
must. Since they must let them stand for the higher virtues that
flow from the Creator, that flow from the example of our Savior
Jesus Christ that the "heaven rescued land may praise the power that
hath made and preserved us a nation, and conquer we must when our
cause it is just and this be our motto, ‘In God is our trust.'"
But for today let us remember and
honor our war dead. Go today and remember your friends, your sons,
brothers, fathers, and those mothers left with nothing but a Gold
Star. Tell a story. Raise a glass. Sailors, "drink to the foam,
wishing a happy voyage home, until you meet once more." Toast your
friends for we may find heavens gates are indeed "guarded by United
States Marines." Cavalry men stand forth and recite Fiddlers Green.
Air Force "drink to those who gave their all of old and go find the
rainbows pot of gold." For the Coast Guard, Semper Parateus
one more time.
Remember those who died, cherish the
fallen, remember them today, then implore God Almighty not to
forsake us, lest we falter and no longer will our motto be "in God
is our trust."
Thank you.
[LDN, with copy of speech by Pastor
Mark Thompson] |
