Why Memorial Day?
May 31, 2010 by Marci
As you spend the day with family and friends at your picnics and barbecues, take time to remember the meaning of this holiday. It’s not to celebrate the beginning of summer or the end of school. It’s to honor men and women throughout the history of our nation who believed in the cause of freedom so greatly that they gave their lives. Thank God for the bravery and valor of the few so that the many could live free.
Freedom Isn’t Free by Kelly Strong
I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers’ tears?
How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom isn’t free.
I heard the sound of taps one night,
When everything was still
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That taps had meant “Amen,”
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn’t free.
