Speak Your Piece: On Memorial Day 2025, we honor sacrifice
Today marks a solemn and significant holiday dedicated each year to honor those who served, the courageous men and women who contributed to the cause of freedom in all our nation’s wars.
Their stories are indelibly recorded in the pages of history, while in faraway corners of the world other stories still are being written. We are celebrating lives lost.
U.S. Army Gen. George S. Patton, whose exploits in World War I and II are well documented, made a timeless speech in 1943, two years before his death.
It was November 11, Armistice Day, marking the end of WWI and honoring the war dead. However, the legendary general also focused on the “sacrificial” message intended for delivery, and said: “I consider it no sacrifice to die for my country. In my mind, we came here, today, to thank God that men like these have lived, rather than regret that they have died.”
On this Memorial Day, we honor the lives and courage of all who died under fire and those who served. We pay tribute to them with solemn ceremonies in our national parks and cemeteries, with local parades. And we salute them in our hearts — recalling Patton’s poignant words — and making this a most meaningful day.
Pat Wandling hosts Speak Your Piece from which this commentary is adapted, weekdays at noon on WBCB 1490.
