Good morning. Commander Hladky, Representative Sawyer, Representative Pratt, Walpole selectmen, Legion members, parade participants, families and friends.  Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this Memorial Day. This is my wife, Ellie’s, and my favorite holiday. We love the simplicity. We love the tradition, and we respect its meaning.

    Parts of the fabric of my family history, like most of yours, are woven from participation in present and past conflicts of our country.
I would like to dedicate this speech to several people. First, my
father, an electrical engineer, who, during World War II, was
relocated to the Bell Laboratories on Long Island to work on
developing aircraft radar. Twenty-five years later I was using updated
versions of that same radar in the A-6 Intruder to help me and my
navigator, Rob Jordan, slice through the mountains of Virginia and
Southeast Asia.

Second, my father’s best boyhood friend from Belleville, Kansas, Chevy White, killed at the age of 22 as a Marine in WWII at Guadalcanal. I honor him as well.

     I would also like to dedicate this speech to my father-in-law who, as a civil engineer in North Africa and Italy in WWII for three years, came home to a new daughter, a new family, and a new life. And finally to our fathers’ wives, Ellie’s mother and my mother, who held their lives together with limited resources but with extended family support during that difficult time.

     Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it has previously been referred to, was officially created by the residents of Waterloo, New York, on May 5, 1866, to honor its soldiers killed in the War between the States, or Civil War.  By 1868 Memorial Day was officially declared as May 30 until 1971 when, for the sake of the three-day weekend, it became officially recognized as the last Monday in May. Now, Memorial Day is the day designated to specifically honor Americans who died while serving their country.

     As I thought about this privilege to speak today, the question I kept revisiting was what would our departed honored veterans, who gave their lives for this country….. what would they say about the events of today and, specifically, events that incorporate the use of military personnel in life threatening roles. Who would risk one life of one American military person without completely understanding as much as possible the consequences of that decision. When General Eisenhower decided upon the Normandy invasion in WWII he must have made that decision with an extremely heavy heart knowing completely the loss of life that would be certain. By the end of that war the peace movement in the United States was at its strongest. People at that time had experienced loss of loved ones, gas rationing, meat rationing, steel pennies, and victory gardens while their lives were put on hold in order to support the War.

But today we send our military personnel, people who have chosen to serve and sacrifice, ..… we send them to Iraq while we go shopping at the mall. Whether for democracy, oil, or Texas justice, or to alienate another section of the world, we have created an unpopular conflict. If we were the ones to break it, we need to fix it. Pity that we may be asked to sacrifice anything that may slow our consumption economy while our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are ordered to take life-threatening risks on a daily basis with inadequate numbers of personnel and inadequate protective equipment. And make no mistake, I fully support the individual honorable efforts of every one of our servicemen in Iraq and around the world.

I am heartened by the senior retired American military officers who continue to come forward to speak out against the decisions of the current administration that have weakened military effectiveness.  The failure of Vietnam, from which I served, was placed squarely on the lap of the American military. They are not going to sit idly by and take that blame again.

     In many ways, war represents failure:

1.   failure of resolution that would eliminate loss of life.

2.    failure of resolution resulting from the collective strengths of rational minds to reach a conclusion satisfactory, and most likely begrudgingly, to all parties involved

3.    failure of the ability to recognize or understand another culture,

4.    and failure of forgiveness for past transgressions that hold the anger and paralyze progress.

Let us hope that the next war, if there ever should be one, and there most likely will, happens because the consequences of NOT going to war far outweigh those of going.

As we pursue our own American dream let us take the time to stay informed and get involved with what is really going on in our schools, our town, our state, our country and our world. I hope and pray that as our world gets smaller and we personalize relationships around it in our work, our play, our travels, and our outreach that the sooner we all realize that we sleep, we eat, we work, we play, we feel joy and sadness over the same events of our daily lives that we will collectively work to eliminate the evils of greed, of terrorism and the way we treat those we accuse of terrorist acts, of selfish secrecy especially when people are hurt by exposure, misinformation or invasion of privacy, and that we support our veterans and military personnel, people who knowingly have risked their lives, both in active duty and retirement.

          May God bless this day and return each of us to our lives to do our best. Thank you