I was asked to give the Memorial Day speech in Bay Village, on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio, this morning. Here’s what I said:
Congressman Kucinich, Mayor Sutherland, honored guests, my friends and fellow citizens:
This is Memorial Day, set aside to remember those who made the supreme sacrifice for our country while serving in its armed forces.
During a visit to Richmond, Virginia not long after the end of the Civil War, Mary Logan, the wife of Union Army Gen. John A. Logan, noticed that the families and friends of fallen Confederate soldiers had decorated their graves with spring flowers. Upon returning home, she told her husband what she had seen. Gen. Logan was commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of loyal Union veterans of the Civil War. He was deeply impressed by what he heard, and on May 5, 1868, issued General Orders No. 11, which provided, in part:
“The 30th day of May… is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit… If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain in us. Let us, then… raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor….”
By 1890, every state in the North had passed Decoration Day, later Memorial Day, legislation. On May 13, 1938, as the Second World War loomed, Congress passed a law making Memorial Day a Federal holiday, recognizing its importance to the entire nation. Several towns now claim to be the site of the first such observances, including Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; Winchester, Virginia; Carbondale, Illinois, and Waterloo, New York. (As always, if you have a good idea, there will never be a lack of those who claim to have had it first.)
The obligation that Gen. Logan solemnly proclaimed endures to this day, and it is now ours. Our countrymen are even now going into harm’s way – not at New Hope Church, or the Marne, or Bastogne, or Chosin Reservoir, or Hue City – but in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and many other places as well. Today the armed forces of the United States deter aggression in South Korea and preserve the peace in Kosovo. America’s reach extends around the world, and our forces serve in places about which many of us have never even heard. Some of our warriors come home wounded, some of them come home forever silenced, and some of them never come home at all.
This is the price we pay for liberty. Who among us would not prefer peace to war? But it is a fact of human existence that war is sometimes, tragically, necessary. Our country’s independence was not won by parley. What did our fallen heroes give us then? One nation, conceived in liberty.
Slavery, an awful stain on America’s honor from our very founding, was not ended by debate. What did our fallen heroes give us then? One nation, indivisible.
The march of fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust were not stopped by diplomacy. What did our fallen heroes give us then? One nation, triumphant.
But even a just war, a necessary war, is rarely glorious for those who wage it. Veterans will tell you of boredom, and fear, and discomfort, of deprivation and hunger, and of the horror of seeing their comrades killed or injured before their eyes. Fifteen years after the guns fell silent at Appomattox, William Tecumseh Sherman of Ohio warned the young men of America that “war is all hell,” and fundamentally, war has changed little since his time.
As Americans we still take just pride in remembering the military heroes of old:
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George Washington, who led the Continental Army through eight long years of war, sometimes holding his patchwork army together by sheer force of will.
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Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a college professor-turned-colonel who earned the Medal of Honor for repelling repeated Confederate attacks on his embattled 20th Maine on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg.
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Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon and the only woman yet to have earned the Medal of Honor.
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George H. Thomas, “the Rock of Chickamauga,” a Virginian who remained loyal to the Union and led its armies to great victories.
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William B. Cushing, “Lincoln’s commando,” expelled from the Naval Academy for pranks and for flunking Spanish, who became one of the most celebrated naval heroes of the Civil War.
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Alvin York, the great World War I rifleman who captured over a hundred enemy troops.
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Dorie Miller, a Navy mess attendant who bravely took up a machine gun on which he hadn’t even been trained to defend his battleship at Pearl Harbor.
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Tivor Rubin, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the United States and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courage in the Korean War.
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John McCain, who withstood torture and privation to become a symbol of heroism for all Americans, regardless of party.
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Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, who both posthumously earned the Medal of Honor for defending a wounded comrade during the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, volunteers for a mission they knew to be suicidal.
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Lori Piestewa, a member of the Hopi tribe who gave her life in her country’s service in the early days of the invasion of Iraq.
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And Michael Murphy, a SEAL officer who purposefully broke cover to call for reinforcements for his unit while fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, and was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his self-sacrifice.
There are so many others and, in this dangerous world, in these challenging times, there will undoubtedly be many more in years to come. By their names we are stirred; by their stories we are inspired.
But why should we still gather, year after year, on Memorial Day? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., himself a wounded veteran of the Civil War, declared that this day
“…celebrates and solemnly affirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight a war [he wrote], you must believe in something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching… [You] may fall – at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks – but in no other way can [you] reach the rewards of victory… I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death – of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and… our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.”
So he said on Memorial Day in 1884, and his words still ring true today. We gather to remember those who fought, and suffered, and died that we might be free. Mere words are inadequate, and the sacrifices they made leave us rightly humbled. From every battlefield where the citizen-soldiers of the United States shed their blood, from every cemetery and every unmarked grave in this great republic and around the world in which they now rest, they speak to us, if we will but listen. And we must listen, now more than ever.
And what do these honored dead tell us? If you will forgive my presumption, they tell us, I think, never to wage war for vain or foolish reasons, but when we have no choice, and when all other means of preserving peace and upholding our national honor have failed. They remind us of the Great Seal of our country, of the eagle which looks to the olive branch but keeps its arrows at the ready, always preferring peace but prepared, as ever, for war. I believe we ought to value the lives of our uniformed fellow-citizens so dearly, that we call for such sacrifices only when it is clear that such is the awful price of maintaining freedom. Our fallen heroes tell us to enjoy the blessings of liberty which they fought to protect, and which we must never take for granted. They ask us to serve our country in ways both large and small: to obey the law, and to strive to change unwise laws; to pay our taxes, to vote, to serve on juries if called, to be involved in our communities, to help those the fallen have left behind, and to uphold the Constitution they swore to preserve, protect and defend. There is no nobler way to serve the nation than to lose your life for it, but there are many other ways to honor their sacrifice, and every good citizen will eagerly look for and seize them.
What have our fallen heroes given us? More than words can say. A single human lifespan might encompass both the shame of segregation and the inauguration of Barack Obama; both the Wright Brothers’ taking to the skies over Kitty Hawk and Apollo 11’s descent to the Sea of Tranquility; both the victory over fascism, and the tragedy of 9-11. We are Americans. In time, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome; there is no enemy we cannot defeat. We are a nation capable of wonders, always inventing itself anew, always looking to a future shaped by our own hands – but we could not be any of these things, had it not been for the sacrifice of the patriots we honor today. America’s warriors have fully earned what Washington at Valley Forge in 1778 called “the transcendent prize which will undoubtedly crown their patience and perseverance: glory and freedom, peace and plenty, to themselves and the community; the admiration of the world, the love of their country and the gratitude of posterity.”
On Boston Common is a great memorial honoring Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The 54th was the regiment of black troops whose determination to overcome both their foes on the battlefield, and the hostility of many in their own society, was so stirringly shown in the movie Glory. Inscribed on Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s sculpture is the Latin motto, Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam – “They left all behind to serve the Republic.”
Our fallen heroes left all behind; we remain. And so let us remember them. Let us strive to be worthy of their sacrifice, and to do our part to carry their starry flag ever forward. Let that be our prayer. Let that be our commitment to each other, and to our country, and always – always! – to those who died so gallantly in its service.
What have our fallen heroes given us? An obligation that can never truly be repaid. But still we must try, not just today, but to the end of all our days.
May God bless you, and may God bless America.
Thank you.
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