MEMORIAL DAY Thoughts

MEMORIAL DAY thoughts:

"Old Glory",  there it waves in the waning sun!  Tomorrow, it will be poised to greet the day, a day of remembrance, to honor those who left but never returned.  Stripes of red and white with fifty stars in a backdrop of blue, "Old Glory" symbolizes many things to this great nation and to the world.  Well or ill, however it is perceived in a microcosm of downgraded values and depreciated standards, it will continue to stand as a beacon of hope to those it has served and saved.  This cherished emblem of purity, hardiness and valor, vigilance, perseverance and justice, of which its tricolors stand, is the inspiration that fueled men and women of uncommon courage to defy the grave in the defense of humanity's  most valued birthright - freedom!

Tomorrow, in the dawn of day, we will pay respect to the fallen and and lay memorial wreaths to their quiet and lonely graves.  We will recall with solemnity and gratitude the gift they so unselfishly bestowed to a country - even to a world -that many times fails to appreciate the magnitude of their hallowed sacrifice.  Tomorrow, we will pay tribute to these heroes'  shortened lives;  we will express regret for the future they never knew, to the joys and bliss they never claimed.  Tomorrow, the plaintive notes of bugles and drums will play some voiceless refrain as a posthumous  homage to those whose red-hot blood of courage watered the ground we stand upon.  Tomorrow, if we listened in quiet reverence in the hush of day, we may still hear the soundless call of those who breathe their last in the dark of night because they believe we deserve a gift only love can redeem.  For is it not said:  "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"? - John 15:3

"For our fathers gone before us,
That they have not toiled in vain;
For the mother hearts that bore us
And shall not waste their pain;
        For the childhood games and laughter
        And the sorrows that turned their tears
        To a song in the heart hereafter
        Unto the end of years -
For these, and what else unspoken
Live when a soldier dies,
You are the body broken -
You are the Sacrifice."
- Brian Hooker, Commemorative Poem for Yale Men who died in the war)