Make Memorial Day a Time to Reflect

As we emerge into the light from the pandemic, Shella, Lucy, ET, and I hope you all enjoy the holiday weekend. Here's a note that we send out each year to help us all remember why Memorial Day exists.

While Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer, where millions of families get together, barbecue, and enjoy a day off, the intent and history of Memorial Day call us to do more; it calls us to remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our Nation. We go to war differently than we used to - with a smaller, but more diverse group of Americans and allies who are closer to actual conflict than ever before. All who died in the service of our Nation should be remembered, so perhaps this day should be more inclusive - adding the fallen of other federal agencies, like the State Department, FBI, the intelligence community, contractors, and those journalists killed covering the wars for We, The People seems appropriate.

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and was first officially proclaimed through General Order 11 on May 5, 1868, by Major General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. It was to be observed each May 30 and flowers were to be placed at the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Recall U.S. history when as early as 1645, hand-selected men from the various colonial militias were outfitted to be able to respond to neighboring villages and towns within one minute - “Minutemen”; a tradition that carried forward to Concord in 1775 that helped push the British back to Boston.

The first casualty of the American Revolution occurred years earlier on February 22, 1770, when loyalist Ebenezer Richardson, a customs employee, fired into a crowd protesting in front of his house killing 11-year-old, Christopher Snider. Eleven days later, the Boston Massacre took place, killing five more people, one of whom was Crispus Attuks, a multi-racial colonist, thus beginning the certain end of British rule in America and the start of the greatest democratic experiment of all time; America. Snider and Attuks were buried in the same grave.

Since that time, our history has given us no shortage of brave heroes who have given their lives defending those “unalienable rights” so wonderfully captured in our Declaration of Independence; “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They deserve a moment of reflection and celebration this weekend. The Founders proclaimed, “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

So they did, and they have been followed by millions of Americans in every war since.

Finally, any words we may write here pale in comparison to some of the greatest speeches ever given in memory of the fallen. Since the dawn of time, those who have died in battle have been commemorated in one way or another. We offer three of these speeches here; the first is, Pericles' Funeral Oration, recorded 2,400 years ago in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The second is from 1884 by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. entitled, "In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched By Fire". The last, our favorite, is Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address. 

We encourage you to read these and allow yourselves to be inspired.

Policymakers should be made keenly aware that the lives we remember on Memorial Day are the precious costs of their decisions to send young men and women to war. This day should give them pause and provide them the opportunity to consider how they resource our national security and how a "yay" or "nay" vote in an air-conditioned chamber of the People can change the course of history for our Nation and the lives of many young Americans - Native, Black, White, Latino, Asian, mixed-race, men, women - and even kids from South Buffalo, NY, and Columbus, OH.

We all know or know of someone who has given that “last full measure of devotion” and even if we don’t, remembering those who bear the burden of war for society affirms the debt that we can never repay - that's why it's called service. Do not mourn them - celebrate them, and demand that our political representatives always defend their votes and be held accountable as they decide for us all on violent endeavors.

Bringing home our fallen is a solemn duty for escorts and a very personal experience for families. I've done it more than once. This short video from Taking Chance on HBO gives you an idea of the emotion involved:

Enjoy this Memorial Day with your families and friends, the fallen would want you to, but please take more than a moment to reflect on the innumerable personal sacrifices that have secured our way of life and ponder if we continue to earn them.

Much love,

CT, Shella, ET, and Lucy