Bob Tamasy
Memorial Day. What’s this weekend all about anyway? A three-day weekend of getting together with family and friends for barbecues and picnics – hotdogs, hamburgers, potato salad (here in the South, it’s ‘tater salad’), and all the fixin’s? The annual running of the Indianapolis 500? Or if you prefer, NASCAR’s annual 600-mile race?
Those are fun activities for the holiday weekend, but in fact Memorial Day isn’t about any of those. It’s former name, “Decoration Day” (which some folks still use), emphasized it’s an annual observance highlighted by decorating the graves of soldiers fallen in any of the USA’s past wars.
A popular song from years ago included the lyrics, “War – what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” Lots of people would agree. War – conflict between one group and another, or one country and another – is one of the worst aspects of the human condition, and it’s been that way from time immemorial.
Unpleasant as it is, we can’t ignore the reality of war. For the warriors and soldiers involved, their loved ones, and those who know little about the ravages of war, it’s good that Memorial Day is observed. Ours is far from a perfect nation, but the freedoms we enjoy, the rights and privileges many other nations don’t offer, were hard-earned – at the cost of many lives. Those who died should be remembered and honored for their noble sacrifices.
Those brave individuals who fought and lost their lives in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and on many fronts in the Middle East, deserve our gratitude and recognition. They didn’t choose to die but were willing to pay the price if necessary.
My father, thankfully, wasn’t among them. He saw battle in the U.S. Army with both infantry and artillery units as a commissioned officer and was wounded twice, as the two Purple Hearts he was awarded attest. But he saw many fellow soldiers who did die. Dad never wanted to talk about what war was like. Most of the memories he brought back from the battlefields weren’t pleasant, and he didn’t want not to revisit them.
Since my dad departed from this life early, at the age of 62, I was only 31 and very much immersed in forging a career and building a family. I wish I could have had more time with him, especially to thank him for his service and the scars from war, both physical and psychological, that he carried for most of his adult life.
Thinking about the many thousands who died for the freedoms and rights we so often take for granted, I’m reminded of the words Jesus Christ spoke to His closest disciples. He wasn’t talking about war, but what He said resonates just the same. Jesus declared, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
In the most important sense, Jesus was speaking about what He was about to do on the cross, dying to make once-and-for-all atonement for our sins. As Romans 5:8 states, “…God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That was the very ultimate of ‘ultimate sacrifices.’
But when we think about it – there being no greater love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends – this is exactly what fallen American heroes through the centuries have done. Whether at Bunker Hill and Cowpens, Bull Run and Gettysburg, Somme and Verdun, Pearl Harbor and Normandy, Inchon and Heartbreak Ridge, Khe Sahn and Hamburger Hill, or the Gulf War, many breathed their last to serve and defend people like us. They need to be remembered.
The book of Ecclesiastes, which many Bible scholars believe was written by King Solomon, often presents a rather cynical look at life. For instance, Ecclesiastes 1:11 declares, “There is no remembrance of earlier things; and also of the later things which will occur, there will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.” Let this never be true for what Memorial Day represents.
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Robert J. Tamasy is a veteran journalist, former newspaper editor, and magazine editor. Bob has written, co-authored and edited more than 20 books. These include ”Marketplace Ambassadors”; “Business At Its Best: Timeless Wisdom from Proverbs for Today’s Workplace”; “Tufting Legacies,” “The Heart of Mentoring,” and “Pursuing Life With a Shepherd’s Heart.” He writes and edits a weekly business meditation, “Monday Manna,” which is translated into nearly 20 languages and distributed via email around the world by CBMC International. The address for Bob's blog is www.bobtamasy.blogspot.com. His email address is btamasy@comcast.net.