Honoring Memorial Day

Today is the day we in America take pause to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of a grateful nation.  While most of us will spend the day with family and friends, we must not forget those who, by their commitment to freedom, made it possible for us to enjoy the lives we have been blessed with. The spirit of this day is best summed up in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, as he stood on the fields of Gettysburg four-and-a-half months after the cannons, muskets, and war-cries were silenced…

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~ from The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

God bless America!