Memorial Day

I think it is fitting that Memorial Day marks the start of summer. Summer is a time of freedom, a time to enjoy all of the best things about our nation. Spending time in nature, spending time with friends and family, traveling, visiting beautiful places throughout our nation. 

Remember all the things we have to be thankful for, and remember all of the men and women who came before us, giving everything to secure our freedom. 
 
Have a happy, peaceful, and safe Memorial Day.

And welcome, summer.

from here^

Perform, then, this one act of remembrance before this Day passes - Remember there is an army of defense and advance that never dies and never surrenders, but is increasingly recruited from the eternal sources of the American spirit and from the generations of American youth.  
~ W.J. Cameron
 

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They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.  
~ Henry Ward Beecher
 

from here^

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 

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All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.   
~ Rudyard Kipling

from here^

I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day.  I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it.  We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did.  
~ Benjamin Harrison

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Cover them over with beautiful flowers,
Deck them with garlands, those brothers of ours,
Lying so silent by night and by day
Sleeping the years of their manhood away.
Give them the meed they have won in the past;
Give them the honors their future forecast;
Give them the chaplets they won in the strife;
Give them the laurels they lost with their life.
~ Will Carleton
 

from here^

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.  
~ Benjamin Disraeli