Memorial Day: Why Does It Matter?
“We don’t even know their names."
History tells us Memorial Day was first recognized as Decoration Day in 1865 when the government was forced to begin creating national military cemeteries to bury over 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers following the Civil War. The name was changed in 1971 some say, because so many did not return home from Vietnam, therefore, had no grave site to decorate.
Memorial Day 2019 should stand out to anyone and everyone who has ever been grateful for any freedom they enjoy daily, as well as so many of those rights they abuse so freely without understanding the ignorance of those actions. Not sure how many of us would decide in an instant to leave the lives we have built, fly away from our luxuries and wives and children, to risk our lives for a nation of those we have no obligation towards, and a government that is falling further and further from the principles of those they are sworn to protect, for the simple fact that “it’s the right thing to do."
Memorial Day is designed for us all to pause, reflect, take a knee, remember, and wonder what our “every day” would look and sound like, had thousands of men and women before us feigned their desire to simply “do the right thing."
I came from 3 generations of military men and my son Jason Ashby served 4 years in the United States Navy. But I have never known anyone personally that never got to bury their family member, or say goodbye, or tell them what they meant to them before their soldier was killed while defending millions of us they had never met.
You will be doing yourself, your family and every ancestor that walked before you an unfathomable injustice if you enjoy any second of Memorial Day, before that pause, or taking a knee to say Thank You, God Bless, something to acknowledge those that died while fighting for something they never received themselves.
The numbers are loosely holding at 1,304,253 lives lost for me and you to do whatever we want to do today. Give them a few minutes of your heart today. It’s the least we can do for so many whose names we will never know.
On this 2019 Memorial Day Weekend, all of us at Classic Rock 96-1 honor those who have fallen in their service to us all.
According to American Battlefield Trust, these are the numbers.