Memorial Day Reflections… from Mitt Romney Central

Governor Romney’s Statement on Memorial Day:

As we observe Memorial Day, we owe thanks to the many Americans who have fought and died to defend our country. Their courage, their willingness to lay down their lives, reminds us that the United States is not a country like any other. Rather, we are an exceptional nation. Those patriots who are on the battlefields today or have gone to battlefields in the past, some never to return, have left us a stronger country, a great nation that, whatever its divisions, shines as a beacon of liberty before the peoples of the world. Memorial Day is a solemn day, but it is also a holiday of barbecues and family gatherings and vacations. Today, let us give remembrance and respect to those who have sacrificed everything to keep us safe.

Memorial Day reflections…

Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Dream of battled fields no more.
Days of danger, nights of waking.
~ Sir Walter Scott

This weekend we remember our fallen, those in the United States military who, throughout our history, bravely and freely sacrificed their tomorrows for our today…

Memorial Day 2011 ~ by Oliver North

Quantico National Cemetery – When I was a kid, we called May 30th “Decoration Day.” It was an occasion for Boy Scouts to be up before dawn and report, in uniform, to the American Legion hall. There, Cub

Boy Scouts laden with flags & flowers to decorate graves of veterans on Memorial Day. 1928

Scouts would be paired with older Boy Scouts, organized into detachments of a dozen or so and issued bags of small American flags. Each group then “deployed” in station wagons and pickup trucks to local cemeteries and churchyards, where we placed Old Glory on every veteran’s grave. Later in the morning, there was a parade down Main Street, led by a color guard, the high-school band and ranks of veterans from World War I, World War II and the war of the moment, Korea. The Veterans of Foreign Wars sold red poppies to raise funds for the disabled. Politicians made speeches, and citizens prayed in public. It was a solemn annual event that taught us reverence for those who served and sacrificed for our country. It’s no longer so.

Begun as a local observance in the aftermath of the Civil War, the first national commemoration took place on May 30, 1868, at the direction of General John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. Though his General Order No. 11 specified “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion” – meaning only Union soldiers – those who tended the burial sites at Arlington, VA, Gettysburg, PA and Vicksburg, MS, decided on their own to decorate the biers of both Union and Confederate war dead.

For five decades, the holiday remained essentially unchanged. But in 1919, as the bodies of young Americans were being returned to the U.S. from the battlefields of World War I, May 30th became a truly national event. It persisted as such until 1971, during Vietnam – the war America wanted to forget – when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by Congress went into effect and turned Memorial Day into a “three-day weekend.” Since then, it’s become an occasion for appliance, mattress and auto sales, picnics, barbecues and auto races. Thankfully, there are some places besides Arlington National Cemetery where Memorial Day still is observed as a time to honor America’s war dead.[...]

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This video, made by a Canadian, represents the gratitude we feel for all American allies, who share the battle and give their lives for freedom…

May Angels Lead You In


Words can’t convey how thankful we are for those in our military who pay the ultimate price for our freedom! They are liberty’s heroes. A tribute… (Misspelling in title and last year’s date doesn’t alter the tribute.)


Better than honor and glory, and history’s iron pen,
Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men.
~Richard Watson Gilder

May you have a meaningful Memorial Day!
from all of us at MRC


► Jayde Wyatt