In doing research on my father's biography I recently came across a speech he wrote and delivered at Riverside Cemetary in Black River Falls, WI on May 30, 1961 to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice given by a few local soldiers. Fifty-one years later the words bear repeating.
An excerpt:
America is great because of the sacrifices these martyred dead have made on the altar of battle. America is great because we - the living - know well and know deeply our obligation to our dead. These boys sacrificed their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations for the good of America. We must do as much in our daily life…to bury intolerance, to bury pride, to bury ignorance, to bury hate. We must bury these emotions of war, so that the feeling and force of peace can flower. Just as the poppies grow on Flanders field, so, too, can an era of peace and prosperity and happiness grow on the buried passions of dissension.
And now, 93 years after our first Memorial Day, we are holding services here as they are being held all over the world. For our American soldiers have transformed little plots of ground in all corners of this globe into America. Where they fought and bled and died, there is America.
The battlefields resound like a ghostly cannonade: St. Lo…Omaha Beach…Iwo Jima…Okinawa…Manila…Bloody Ridge…Chateau-Thierry.
Some other places bear no names, but only latitude and longitude. Such a remote spot in India has a final thought for us this morning. In this distant place is an Allied cemetery, where lie the bodies of many of our American soldiers who fought in India and Burma during World War II. Over the portals of this sacred grove are written these words: “TELL THEM THAT WE GAVE OUR TODAYS FOR THEIR TOMORROWS.”
This is the spirit of America speaking. This is the greatness of our Nation. Soldiers like your Mitchell Red Cloud, your Frank Miles, your Tommy Hagen, your William Moore gave their todays for our tomorrows. Just as our Lord gave the life of His son for us.
Very well said, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment