Memorial Day.

At the expense of redundancy I find these photos worth repeating. They were taken several years ago on the occasion of our visit to Sister that lives in Virginia, Amanda. (Pronounced a-mon-da). She and her husband gave us the 50 cent tour of D.C. It was a whirlwind kind of day. I don't think I can even begin to explain the emotions the day evoked. I didn't know. I didn't know that it would strike so deep inside of me. Seeing the memorials all around the city. We did homage to my Dad by visiting the WWII Memorial and taking this snap by the Memorial to the Okinawa Campaign, where Dad spent part of the war. 

My Dad. Forever a member of The Greatest Generation. 

Forever my hero. 

The Vietnam Memorial brought me to tears. Mr. Macho found three names of young men from our community whose lives were cut short by this war. The Wall. I didn't know it would be so powerful.

This scene. Snapped by so many tourist every day. And yet. I had to record it for myself. Once again, a very emotional response to the magnitude of sacrifice. It will take away your breath. 

Dignified homage. 

At this juncture I feel compelled to copy this speech...

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

***

Let there be peace on earth. And let it begin with me.