Ted Daywalt
President, VetJobs.com, Inc
Captain, USNR, Retired

We are gathered here today for the purpose of commemorating the souls of our comrades who are buried in this beautiful setting and for what they did in the past to defend our great Republic. It is patriotic with ceremonies like these that the citizens of our country offer a grateful homage and affectionate tribute annually to the memories of those who dared all, periled all, and in many cases lost all, for the country they loved.

Our gathering today marks the journey of advancing time and the resulting cause of a reunion of hearts engendering common sympathies. By gathering together we perpetuate the deeds of many a noble Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman and Coast Guardsman. By this custom we commemorate the dead, thereby enshrining their memories in the hearts of succeeding generations, and causing the service of those buried here to be imitated by younger generations who come after them.

We do not meet on these Memorial Days to weep for the dead. Time heals the scars of conflicts in which our nation has been involved, and we can calmly contemplate the great lesson of patriotic devotion, and rejoice today that the nation to which we belong produces such honorable men and women noble enough to die for that which they value so much, that being freedom.

We are here today to foster patriotism, in view of the most tremendous sacrifices ever willingly made by a people on the altar of freedom. That the sacrifices of past conflicts deserve this rank is validated by the fact that these sacrifices were made primarily by volunteers.

Under our Constitutional Republic, protection and allegiance are reciprocal. When one ceases the other expires. Not only is it the duty of the patriot to defend, but to save liberty, to save rights, to save amidst perils and dangers that appall the stoutest of hearts. To preserve liberty takes great courage which I fervently pray many in our government today will develop.

And while today we decorate these graves of our honored dead with beautiful garlands, and while the ground beneath in which these patriots are taking their final rest will glisten with floral wreaths, let us be not unmindful of the duties that we give this hallowed land for which those before us so honorably served and have since passed on.

Such is today’s military, patriots all, whose grand deeds and heroic achievements rise resplendent above the tears and groans of mortal agony and bereavement. The fame of the American military person, they who cut the most sacred ties of their family and walked away from a position of ease and comfort to offer up, if necessary, their lives in the maintenance of and defense of a grand and immortal principle, that of freedom in our free market society governed by a Constitutional Republic.

In a cemetery in Virginia is the inscription: NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD, NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK, NOT LURED BY AMBITION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY, BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO DUTY AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT, THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL, SACRIFICED ALL, DARED ALL, AND DIED.

Those words were written by a Confederate veteran who had later become a minister. This simple sentence speaks for all American military in all wars. Men and women who must always trust their lives to the judgment of their leaders, and whose bond thus goes to individuals rather than to stark ideology. Citizens who desire more than anything to sleep with the satisfaction that when all the rhetoric was stripped away, they had fulfilled their duty as an honorable member of the United States military and who in the end must not only judge their acts while they served, but be judged by their successors.

And so I am here with you today to remember.

Love of our country still resonates strong in this great nation. The patriotism that was so strong in the founders of our Republic is still a moving force in our country today. But we are a different people from those hearty souls who came, settled and formed these United States of America. We are now a country comprised of people from all the nations of the world who seek freedom and escape from tyranny, socialism and communism.

There are two important lessons for us to take away from this day of remembrance.

The first is one our leaders should carry next to their hearts and contemplate every time they face a crisis, however small, which puts our military in harms way. Such decisions should resound in their conscience from the power of millions of patriot graves. It is simply this: You hold our military members’ lives in sacred trust. When a citizen has sworn to obey you and follow your judgment, and enter a battlefield or go to an area of conflict to defend the interests you define as worthy of their blood, do not abuse that awesome power through careless policy, unclear objectives, or inflexible leadership.

And to the members of Congress I say you must take care of the men and women in the military irrespective of the costs, for without those willing to join the military, your policies would not be upheld, America would become weak and we would not have our freedoms!

The second lesson regards those of us who have taken such an oath, and who have honored the judgment of our leaders. The lesson is duty. Duty is a constant, frozen in the context of the moment it is performed. Duty is action, taken after listening to one’s leaders, and weighing risk and fear against the powerful draw of obligation to family, to religion, to nation, and to the unknown future.

As one who was raised in a military family and then spent over twenty seven years in the Navy, I know personally that the duty of the military is to defend those rights guaranteed to the people by the Constitution which is still the law of our land and to yield obedience to our Constitutional Republic form of government which shields and protects citizens from wrong and oppression, irrespective of our personal political opinions and leanings.

The two things of inestimable value which our Constitutional Republic furnishes, and which we ought to preserve even with life itself, are liberty and law – or rather liberty in the law.

The old world gave us law, without which the freedoms of our American society would not exist. The American people govern themselves, not in one form of government alone, but in varying forms for national, state, county and municipal, down to the smallest school district and thousands of voluntary organizations that together form our Constitutional Republic. In each the methods by which the people’s will may be made supreme in designated affairs are clearly defined, so that the whole of united human effort is brought under the dominion of law. Men and women are willing to die that this liberty under law may not perish from the world, and that our free market society will persevere in liberty, not in the economic tyranny of socialism.

It must always be remembered that conflict and war is horrible and savage. I pray for a time when we are no longer called to participate in conflicts and war, but such will never be the case. The history of the world has shown that war is continuous.

So long as there are those who want to take away American liberties, so long as there are those who covet American freedoms and our successful free market economic system, so long as there are those who espouse fascism, socialism and communism, so long as there are those that demand the world believe in only one religion, so long as there are those whose religion enslaves others, there will be conflicts and war.

To protect ourselves America must resist the temptation to become apathetic. We must not resign ourselves to political correctness and the onslaught of socialism. It is imperative that we look back on our history and learn from the mistakes that were made in the past, both political and economic. Students in our schools must know and understand the differences between liberty with free markets and the economic tyranny of socialism. They must know what happened before so our beloved country does not commit the same mistakes in our future.

But political correctness denies letting teachers educate what happened in the past. Politically correct educators do not want history taught for fear we might offend or worse, our population will understand what is happening to them. And for the same reasons the history of our many wars are given scant, if any, attention in our schools and universities today. Our schools should teach these wars and American history not to offend, but to educate!

We need to remember what happened in the past so that we may realize that our comfortable life styles created by our free market society and Constitutional Republic are not guaranteed except by a strong military and our Second Amendment rights.

Whenever our country has had peace, it was merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous untamed streaming of a world that envies our free market economic system and the freedoms our Constitutional Republic affords. We must always be ready. We must always maintain a strong defense and military.

At Gettysburg, President Lincoln said: “…in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot consecrate…we cannot 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 rather for us to be here dedicated to that 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.”

You see, out of heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism.

George Orwell once noted: We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

The military men and women, who are buried in this and the other national cemeteries, and their families, understand on a personal level all that I have brought to you today. They know first hand that the military is the only work force in America whose contract includes a mandatory clause that says they may have to give their life to maintain the freedoms the rest of us enjoy.

So I would like to end with part of a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It carries the reasoned sentiment of a veteran from the past, and speaks to those in the military of today. It goes like this:

And when the wind in the tree-tops roared, the soldier asked from the deep dark grave:
“Did the banner flutter then?” “Not so, my hero,” the wind replied.
“The fight is done, but the banner won, thy comrades of old have borne it hence,
have borne it in triumph hence.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave: “I am content.”

Then he heareth the lovers laughing pass, and the soldier asks once more:
“Are these not the voices of them that love, that love–and remember me?”
“Not so, my hero,” the lovers say, “we are those that remember not;
For the spring has come and the earth has smiled, and the dead must be forgot.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave: “I am content.”

Like our comrades who sleep here today, that soldier was content in the knowledge that he did his duty for his country with honor.

Thank you for your time today and the privilege to address you on this Memorial Day weekend. Let us always continue to have these celebrations and understand what they mean not only for us today, but for the future generations of our great Republic.

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