What It’s Really About

Note: I have posted this Memorial Day blog before, and I don’t feel it can be repeated often enough.

Today is not about cookouts, or car races, or getting out of town for a three day weekend at the lake or campground. It’s about more than that. Much, much more.

It is a day to remember the men and women who have given us the most precious gift of all, our very freedom, and who paid for it with their lives. We forget that too easily in this country. And we need to remember.

It’s about this. American heroes who made the supreme sacrifice for their country. It’s about honoring those heroes. About remembering that we can sleep comfortably in our beds tonight, because they sleep here forever. We need to remember that all of those headstones decorated with little American flags in all of those cemeteries across this great land of ours represent somebody’s father, somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister or daughter.

It’s about remembering those who served. It’s about taking the time to thank a veteran. Because without him or her, there might not be us.

They didn’t go because they wanted to. They went because they needed to. Not because their number came up with some draft board. They went because that’s what Americans do. Their country needed them. Their country called. And they answered the call.

I’m heartened to see that while our country may be divided on a lot of issues these days, one thing that most of us agree on is that we appreciate our servicemen and women. It hasn’t always been that way.

Please remember that right now, as you are reading this with your morning coffee, or during a commercial break in your favorite television show, that somebody’s son or daughter, somebody’s brother or sister, somebody’s husband or wife, is in the enemy’s gun sights. Somewhere today or tomorrow or next week, some mother, or father, or wife, or husband will answer a knock on their door and find solemn men in uniform there to deliver the very worst news of all. That is what this day is about.

To all of our heroes who never came home, rest in peace. To all of my brothers and sisters who wore the uniform, and to those who are still serving, thank you from the very bottom of my heart. Welcome home.

Congratulations Gene Holcomb, winner of our drawing for an audiobook of After The Fire, the ninth book in George Wier’s popular Bill Travis mystery series. We had 71 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon.

Thought For The Day – A veteran – whether active duty, retired, or National Guard or Reserve – is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to and including their life.”

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