I was asked to speak at Memorial Day services for the Lignite and Portal American Legion posts this year, an honor I readily accepted, and would like to share that speech with all of you.

I hope you all had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend and took the time to honor those who are no longer with us.

When I was a cub scout, a few years back, Memorial Day was a day I always looked forward to because it was the day we got to march with the soldiers. I can remember watching the veterans get ready for the Memorial Day march in the Legion Hall while us cub scouts attempted to fight the urge to poke one another with the American flags we were all given to carry as we marched. We didn’t fight it very hard and a few of us would always get our flags confiscated by our den mother, who just happened to be my mother.

Marching with the veterans in my cub scout uniform always made me feel proud and I would imagine myself as John Wayne fresh from the front lines. It’s hard for an eight-year-old with stubby legs to pull off the John Wayne swagger while trying to keep step with the veterans. Today I felt that same pride as I got the opportunity to march with the soldiers again.

Many of them are the very same veterans I marched with 30 years ago. Many of them I didn’t know had served in the military until my first Memorial Day march as a cub scout.

I knew these men as farmers, teachers, mechanics, oil field workers, and businessmen. To find out they were soldiers changed them forever in my eyes. I would look at them and try to imagine where they had been, what they had seen, what they had endured, and wonder how they could go from being John Wayne to a work-a-day citizen of Burke County.

Each and every time I encountered them, I would yearn to ask about their experience, about their war, but I never did. I never did because even to a curious eight-year-old it seemed to be a private matter and as a curious 37-year-old it still does.

I had plans to contact each veteran who is here and get their story to share with you today, but I doubted many of them would want this day to be about them. This day is a day to remember the men and women who served our country and are no longer with us.

Some left here young and full of life to serve our country and fight for the freedoms our flag represents and returned lifeless under the cover of that very same flag. They are who we are here for, they are not to be forgotten, the sacrifice they made cannot be forgotten. That is why these men and women, these soldiers, these veterans march every year. It is important we have this day of remembrance and take part in these services.

General George S. Patton once said, “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

I disagree with the General, which is easy to do given his current status. We mourn the death of a soldier because they were more than a soldier. They were a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a friend.

That is who we mourn the loss of. Today is their day.