On Memorial Day I saw a tough looking group of motorcyclists gathering for a ride and being a motorcycle rider I decided to stop and find out where they were headed. I discovered they’re the Patriot Guard Riders who attend funeral services of fallen American heroes as a show of respect and to shield the mourning families from interruptions created by protesters. They were going to the Memorial Day service at Fort Vancouver to stand as flag bearers around the perimeter of the ceremony. It was touching to see a group of burly guys reciting the pledge of allegiance and saying a prayer before the ride.

The Fort Vancouver service was extremely moving as families who had lost a son or husband were presented a wreath and laid it at a monument to our fallen war heroes. Tearfully I watched as an 8 year old boy read a poem about his dad, his hero, who he lost this past fall in Iraq. Escorted by a Marine, a young mother, carrying her daughter, laid a wreath in memory of her beloved husband who never got to see his only child.

A few years ago I made a trip to the French countryside of Normandy. On several occasions while driving in the farmland I would come upon a cemetery with hundreds of the graves of soldiers who died in WWII. Many of the graves were marked as the resting place of an unknown soldier and many of them were young American men.  It was sobering to view the graves of  these young men, similar in age to my own sons, who had fought and died for our country and never returned home to their familes and to the life we enjoy. I cannot imagine the sum their mother’s grief or the size of the river of tears that must have been shed for them.

I don’ think anyone could express any better the debt we owe these men than Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address.

“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.”

Here’s some photography from Memorial Day.