Memorial Day 2009

This holiday I always remember my grandmothers writing about how they were laying wreaths in the cemetery. This would be at my dad's and my grandfathers' graves. In middle school I lived in the small town in Missouri where my dad was buried. I marched in the school band and there was always a Memorial Day parade and our band would play and march all through the town and out to the cemetery, the vets from all wars would march with us. We would stop at the special Veterans' section and wind around through the graves. We never went where my dad was and by the older section of my family plot, where several generations of my mom's family were buried. However, scattered throughout this quiet and rather large cemetery because it was quite old were little fluttering American flags by tombstones of those who were veterans of wars clear back to the Civil War. Many men served in my family on both my mother's and father's side. A few were heroes, some were disabled. I'm so glad though that I am from a family that has military service in its history. It helps me to appreciate my country and what our freedom has cost and what it means.

I think of the vets I have met from the wars of Viet Nam, Korea, of my grandfather who lived so long from WW1 and the grandfather that died early from the effects of mustard gas he suffered in Belgium on the front in WW1. I always think of the story of my dad and his fervor to serve in the Army Air Corps in WW2 and being turned down because of his asthma. Then he learned to fly anyway and was accepted into the Navy. My mom has always impressed on us that he really believed in the USA and that we should always defend what it means. She had his name added to the WW2 Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Since I was 3 years old selling paper poppies for the VFW on the street of my small home town in Missouri to now, dedicated to the conservation of our country and even the world, these values have been instilled so that they have lasted my whole life through.

I hope my daughter and grandchildren have learned these values. We are blessed by dedicated men and women who risk their lives for freedom and have given their lives bravely so that we can continue to have a good life here.

But, I hope the war in Iraq ends sooner than the President has said, that the war in Afghanistan will also end soon with a victory for the free world. Our losses of good people to war will end and there will be no more such wars, that is my prayer.