A Spot on the Horizon

It is not true to say that I dust this speech off each Memorial Day; the truth is, I tuck it nearby so that I can read it any day, sometimes every day. Six years ago my dad wrote and delivered this speech at our hometown Memorial Day services, the first after 9/11. I will admit my bias, but still, I think it is the best speech I have ever heard.

Memorial Day—May 27, 2002
Norwich, NY

J. Philip McGuire, guest speaker
Combat Medic, 2/502 101st Airborne
Vietnam—1969-1971

Good Morning Friends and Neighbors—

Here we are again. Come together on a day in May to remember, to
recall the images of men, mostly young men, who went away for that
flag flying over us; men who didn't come home.

If you're like me, and I suspect some of you are, memory plays tricks
and the film in our head is hazy—filtered through the lens of our own
lives, and the vision of events and people past form dreamlike and not
always real.

The men that I remember were young. They didn't talk politics or
causes and they weren't always fighting for the same reasons they were
sent… Mostly they talked about home, about girlfriends, family, the
job they left—and girls.

Young men of course are the best soldiers. I guess not only because
they are strong and vigorous but because the recklessness of youth
lends itself to soldiering. Often the youngest volunteer to walk
point. For the young, death is a spot on the horizon—it's there, but
it's not today's concern.

Many of these soldiers were months earlier playing high school
football and wearing stiff leather shoes to the prom…they did
heroic things—exposed themselves to enemy fire and threw themselves on
grenades.

The cruel confusion of war takes some in random chance. War shows no
favorites. Our best and brightest… hopeful men that today are forever
young—frozen in time, unfinished lives.

We recall the astonished look on the faces of the hurt and bleeding: a
look that says, "I'm only 19—I can't die."

The wounded and dying don't talk of the cause or the campaign. Most
ask to go home. They ask for mom—tell her I love her, that it's
okay...

But please don't leave me on this god-forsaken hill.

It has always been so. From the carnage at Gettysburg—the bloody
beaches of Normandy—the frozen Chosin Reservoir—to the steaming jungle
of the Ashau Valley.

Our best and brightest have marched into eternity with one request.
Please don't forget us.

On last September's bright blue day, horror came out of the sky and
our enemies cut down the innocent only to give names and faces to
heroes. Men and women challenged death in falling towers and doomed
airliners that others might be spared.

Abraham Lincoln observed that it's too great a task for us ordinary
people to memorialize these brave Americans. Lincoln noted their
sacrifice was too great, too magnificent, too noble for us, caught up
in our everyday lives, to honor in a meaningful way.

But do we daydream and imagine that if the opportunity presented we
too would do the heroic thing? Don't we think we'd storm the hijackers
on our doomed plane? Race into the collapsing skyscraper? We'd face
enemy fire to save a friend--- wouldn't we?

These things we ponder—we pray for courage. As the daydream fades we
find ourselves paying the same bills, worrying about our children, and
wondering how the man in the mirror got this old.

The job of honoring our fallen warriors might seem too great until we
remember them as ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

The truth for us is that we will probably never be thrust onto the
stage of great things.

Those everyday people who fell for us weren't thinking of great ideas
at the end—not of the cause, the campaign, or the issues.

They talked of home. And home is here. Home is
you and me. Home is where we live, work, love, and join the human
condition--the USA, where we pray for God's grace to make a place for
us at the end.

Here is where we honor our fallen. By doing things denied them when
they were cut down in the spring of their lives.

What can we do? First, let's imagine them as they might have become.
Maybe he's a mechanic who would fix our car; maybe he'd be driving
that truck or patrolling our streets, or planting a field of corn.

Then, let's do this: Let's do kind things in their name. Let's be good
citizens, let's volunteer and be optimistic. Let's encourage a young
person and visit an old one. Let's do ordinary things in a special
way.

We can do it for them and thank them for their sacrifice. So let's
meet here each year and remember them. Let's carve their names in
granite and visit their graves. Let's also carve their names in our
hearts and honor them by living our lives in a way that they might
have lived theirs.

Thank you.