This holiday weekend, be sure and pay a visit to the Courthouse Square. In particular, visit the Veterans Memorial on the northeast corner of the courthouse lawn.
Look at the names etched in stone, those of local servicemen who paid the ultimate sacrifice in both world wars, the Korean Conflict and Vietnam. Chances are you’ll recognize many of them. Chances are, you’ll call at least one of them family.
Remember that these are our honored dead, and we set aside a day each year to remember that they made the sacrifices for everything we hold dear today — namely, our freedom. They put on a uniform, strapped on gear, picked up a weapon and headed into harm’s way to protect their country. They also no doubt had their own loved ones in mind when they headed off to Europe or the Pacific or Southeast Asia. They took their service personally. The aims of the United States were their own. They fought; they died. On Memorial Day, we honor them.
Monday, many Columbia County residents will enjoy a day off work. We’ll fire up the grill, invite over friends and family, play, relax, have fun and be with one another. It will be a much-deserved respite from the rigors of the work week.
But we should also take time to attend at least one of the Memorial Day ceremonies scheduled for Monday morning, and take a moment to remember and appreciate the sacrifices made by those who knew the real rigors of true service. We should honor those lives and find a way to take those sacrifices as personally as the soldiers who made them. We should realize that nothing comes free and that our well-deserved time-off from work was bought and paid for by those who had loved ones of their own — who once dreamed of the same kind of future that we dream of today, one filled with family and friends and healthy communities.
We can honor them by nurturing those dreams for them. Saying, “we appreciate your service” is one thing, but it is insufficient. We owe a huge debt, one we can, perhaps, never repay. A good start would be taking time Monday to pause and remember and feel gratitude — if only for a moment.