Sunday, May 27, 2012

Memorial Day


Memorial Day is on the last Monday in May and honors those
men and women who lost their lives serving their country.
What we celebrate as Memorial Day today, began at the end of
the Civil War. Family members of the many soldiers slain in
battle would visit the grave sites of their fallen relatives
or friends and decorate the graves with flowers.

"It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in
defense of our country in wars far away. The imagination
plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and
wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers,
grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they
died, they gave up two lives -- the one they were living and
the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up
their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers.
They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave
up everything for their county, for us. All we can do is
remember."

-- Ronald Wilson Reagan - Remarks at Veteran's Day ceremony,
Arlington National Cemetery Arlington, Virginia, November
11, 1985

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