Memorial Day in America

 So, my friends, this is Memorial day in America. Join me in reflecting on it.

Memorial Day in America, as an annual observance, can be traced back to the end of the Civil War, a war in which over a half-million died.  Southern women scattered spring flowers on graves of both northern Union and southern Confederate soldiers.

 Ron

 On June 6, 1944 President Franklin Roosevelt offered a D-Day Prayer (as we readied for the great attack on Hitler’s Nazis), which is now part of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.:  “My fellow Americans, I ask you to join with me in prayer: Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization.

 “Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces.

 We know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.”

In 1958, President Eisenhower placed soldiers in the tomb from World War II and the Korean War. In 1968, one hundred years after the first observance, Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday in May.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan placed a soldier from the Vietnam War in that tomb. DNA tests later identified him as pilot Michael Blassie, whose 37B Dragonfly was shot down near An Loc, South Vietnam. He had graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970.

In 2000, Congress passed The National Moment of Remembrance Act (Public Law 106-579), whereby on each Memorial Day, at 3:00 pm, citizens should pause for a moment of prayer:  “Congress finds that it is essential to remember and renew the legacy of Memorial Day to pay tribute to individuals who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the United States.

“Greater strides must be made to demonstrate appreciation for those loyal people whose values, represented by their sacrifices, are critical to the future of the United States and to encourage and to dedicate themselves to the principles for which those heroes of the United States died.

“A symbolic act of unity to honor the men and women of the United States who died in the pursuit of freedom and peace as a day of prayer for permanent peace.”

In his Memorial Day Address, May 31, 1923, President Calvin Coolidge said:  “Settlers came here from mixed motives. Generally defined, they were seeking a broader freedom.  They were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance to the principle of self-government.  It says in the Bible that ‘God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness.'”

 “The persecutions of the Puritans in England for non-conformity, and the religious agitations and conflicts in Germany by Luther, in Geneva by Calvin, and in Scotland by Knox, were the preparatory ordeals for qualifying Christian men for the work of establishing the civil institutions on the American Continent.

 “God sifted’ in these conflicts a whole nation that He might send choice grain over into the wilderness’; and the blood and persecution of martyrs became the seed of both the church and the state.  It was in these schools of fiery trial that the founders of the American republic were educated and prepared for their grand Christian mission.

 “They were trained in stormy times, in order to prepare them to establish the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty and of just systems of civil government.”

 Concluding in his Memorial Day Address that America’s republic is worth preserving, President Calvin Coolidge stated May 31, 1923:

“They had a genius for organized society on the foundations of piety, righteousness, liberty, and obedience of the law. Who can fail to see in it the hand of destiy? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence?”

Douglas MacArthur told West Point cadets, May 1962:

 “The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training-sacrifice.

 “In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those Divine attributes which his Maker gave when He created man in His own image.

 “No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of Divine help which alone can sustain him.

 However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.”