Most people know that Memorial Day is a day to honor the men and women who have served in our armed forces. Memorial Day is a day to honor those that have died in war, for those who have fought, and for those who are still fighting.

Memorial Day has been celebrated for over 100 years, but it wasn’t until 1971 that it became an official holiday.

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Billy Graham

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.

Thucydides

Who kept the faith and fought the fight; The glory theirs, the duty ours. -Wallace Bruce

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. -Joseph Campbell

The patriot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree. -Thomas Campbell

The cost of liberty is less than the cost of repression. – Web Dubois.

On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation. – Thomas William Parsons

And I am proud to be American, where at least I know I am free, and I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me and I’ll proudly stand next to him to defend her still today, ‘cuz there ain’t no doubt that I love this land, god bless the USA.- Lee Greenwood

Although, no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.-Daniel Webster

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt. – Bergen Evans

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men. – Georges Clemenceau

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.- John F. Kennedy.

And each man stand with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.

Lise Hand

Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.

Publilius Syrus

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

Arthur Ashe

Heroism is latent in every human soul – However humble or unknown, they (the veterans) have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all the self-denials – privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sicknesses, mutilations, life-long hurts and losses, death itself – for some great good, dimly seen but dearly held.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.

François de la Rochefoucauld

A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.

Novalis

We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.

Albert Einstein

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.

Louis Pasteur

It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

Norman Schwarzkopf

The hero is the man dedicated to the creation and / or defense of reality-conforming, life-promoting values.

Andrew Bernstein

Perfect valor is to behave, without witnesses, as one would act were all the world watching.

François de la Rochefoucauld

Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

Michel de Montaigne

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

Mark Twain

The secret of Happiness is Freedom, and the secret of Freedom, Courage.

Thucydides

Heroism … is endurance for one moment more.

George F. Kennan

Unlearned Lesson  Memorial Day Poem

Memorial Day

Of every year

The little valiant

Flags appear

On every fallen

Soldier’s grave–

Symbol of what

Each died to save.

And we who see

And still have breath–

Are we no wiser

For their death?

~Dorothy Brown Thompson~

A National Moment of Remembrance On Memorial Day

That poem about where “poppies blow”

And, “the crosses, row on row”

Still rings true, these ninety years

After written, still brings tears.

We still have Dead, “amid the guns”

And lose our young and our loved ones

Those who lived, “short days ago”

Who, “felt dawn, saw sunset glow”.

In Flanders Fields, “the poppy red”

Still grow near where the blood was bled

They, “Take up our quarrel with the foe”

And still die for Freedoms that we know.

They pass, “The torch” to, “hold it high”

And not, “break the faith with us who die”

For they, “shall not sleep, though poppies grow”

Beneath all those, “crosses, row on row”

In Flanders Fields.

Del “Abe” Jones

4-25-2005

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

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