11/11/2019
Thank you South Lyon for the great turnout today at the Veterans Memorial. By request, here is Sr. Vice Commander's Address:
On this veterans day, we gather in this humble little town in Michigan to dedicate a memorial to the people who have served and are serving this nation and this state. Some chose the military life, some were drafted.
Ironically, this day was chosen because the war to end all wars had just concluded, World War I. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month was chosen and in 1954, President Eisenhower officially decreed this day as Veterans Day to honor all veterans, living and dead.
We veterans are brothers and sisters. We are a family, not at the exclusion of other families by birth, marriage or adoption. Our legacy together spans a common start, a common purpose and uncommon courage.
We come from anywhere and everywhere. Our demographics are your demographics, we are poets, priests, nerds, gym rats, welders, cooks, teachers, leaders, drivers and more.
We could all tell you stories you might not believe.
We could also tell you stories that would keep you awake at night.
Our stories are portrayed in terms of courage, violence, care and adversity. Whether we served peacetime, during Vietnam or in the nearly 30 years of war in the Middle East.
We are reservists who work two full time jobs, one with part time pay. We leave our families on weekends and serve when our nation needs us, much at the peril of advancement and on the backs of those we love.
�We are Guardsmen, who are called into service when there’s a disaster or to protect out border. Our guardsmen serve our state as well as out nation.
We are active duty, where every day’s tasks are for the defense of the nation, in the skies, in space, on the ground, on the sea, under the sea and in the digital realm.
We are humble when the spotlight is turned on us.
We are the picture of irony, we prepare for what we do not want, we prepare for war yet we know its terror and its purpose and do not want it.
We leave those we love because we love them.
We have watched our comrades take their last breath and saluted smartly when the folds of the flag are a solemn field of blue with white stars and presented to one they love.
We are American Solders
We are American Sailors
We are American Marines
We are American Airman
We are American Coast Guardsmen
Our mission is to fly, march, drive and sail to victory
While we stood up for others, we don’t do much of that for ourselves. We are focused on serving, not taking. We earned benefits for our sacrifices but hesitate to take them. We put up with endless appeals, uneven health care and sometimes conceal our wounds because we are not wired to be a burden.
Some of us are homeless.
Some of us have wounds you will never see.
Some of us die two deaths, one on the battlefield and one when we get home.
60,000 of our brothers and sisters have taken their own lives in the past decade and the number continues to climb.
It’s sobering.
We live in your neighborhoods. We vote in your elections. We shop in the stores and live our anonymous American life. We are Americans after all, we just have different stories.
So, as we gather in this small community to honor our veterans, it’s important to put faces to the names, to remember and more importantly care for them as they have cared for you. It was their duty to defend, it is your duty to never forget the sacrifices that allow you the freedom to disagree, to worship where you want, to read what you are interested in and to love whom you want to love. It is the American military that keeps and preserves what we are as a nation. So on this celebration of the 11th day of the 11th month, let’s take a moment to simply say, we remember you.
These are our neighbors who have served this nation, remember their faces, ask them about their stories, and not only thank them but ask them why they served. We should not forget that our community’s freedom rested upon their shoulders at one time.
I’d like to close with a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson when a similar monument was dedicated, it’s called the Concord Hymm:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Thank you and God Bless this community and this nation.
