MEMORIAL DAY - MAY 26th, 2008
Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 11:41 pm
With all of the social activities taking place this weekend, auto racing, baseball, travel, family, and simply sharing time with good friends...please remember those who sacrificed their lives in current and past wars or during peacetime service to America, so that we may enjoy the fruits of America's liberty.
With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.
- Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775.
...The Unknown Soldier who is returned to us today and whom we lay to rest is symbolic of all our missing sons, and we will present him with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration that we can bestow.
About him we may well wonder, as others have: As a child, did he play on some street in a great American city? Or did he work beside his father on a farm out in America's heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children? Did he look expectantly to return to a bride?
We'll never know the answers to these questions about his life. We do know, though, why he died. He saw the horrors of war but bravely faced them, certain his own cause and his country's cause was a noble one; that he was fighting for human dignity, for free men everywhere. Today we pause to embrace him and all who served us so well in a war whose end offered no parades, no flags, and so little thanks. We can be worthy of the values and ideals for which our sons sacrificed--worthy of their courage in the face of a fear that few of us will ever experience--by honoring their commitment and devotion to duty and country.
- Ronald Reagan, Memorial Day Speech at Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, May 28, 1984
Rest in peace, my brothers and sisters.
With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves.
- Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775.
...The Unknown Soldier who is returned to us today and whom we lay to rest is symbolic of all our missing sons, and we will present him with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration that we can bestow.
About him we may well wonder, as others have: As a child, did he play on some street in a great American city? Or did he work beside his father on a farm out in America's heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children? Did he look expectantly to return to a bride?
We'll never know the answers to these questions about his life. We do know, though, why he died. He saw the horrors of war but bravely faced them, certain his own cause and his country's cause was a noble one; that he was fighting for human dignity, for free men everywhere. Today we pause to embrace him and all who served us so well in a war whose end offered no parades, no flags, and so little thanks. We can be worthy of the values and ideals for which our sons sacrificed--worthy of their courage in the face of a fear that few of us will ever experience--by honoring their commitment and devotion to duty and country.
- Ronald Reagan, Memorial Day Speech at Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, May 28, 1984
Rest in peace, my brothers and sisters.
