Dateline: Home Study

The Memorial Day service was today and turn was not too bad. I had hoped for a little better but the weather was not all that nice and it looked rain was about to fall at any minute. I was the Master of Ceremonies and had the privilege of introducing Major General Joseph Fant, US Army (Ret) as the key note speaker. We also had the mayor of Starkville and the President of the Board of Supervisors speak as well. The highlights were the introduction of the next of kin of those who died in war and the reading of the names of those who died. We then laid wreaths on the monument at the courthouse.

I also made all the news channels in the major metropolitan Starkville area. I, along with others, was interviewed before the event started and after the event ended and they used both interviews of me. I don’t think it was so much what I said as it was that I was dressed in whites.

My concluding remarks are below.

In closing today, I would like to acknowledge that we are still a nation at war, a nation at war against terrorism, fighting not just for freedom at home but for freedom of all people of the world. Many have already died for this cause, and many more will surely die before we prevail. Mississippi, the patriotic state she is, ranks fourth in the nation in the number who have paid the last full measure in this war and it is fitting that we learn from their sacrifice. To quote that great spokesman Abraham Lincoln, as he stood on the Battlefield at Gettysburg,

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

I always like to remind people that we are still at war and it is not just in Iraq and Afghanistan.