Memorial Day, 2025

 

Typically, when I have written about Memorial Day, it’s with a sense of melancholy and gratitude, of sorrow and thanks. 

Some might say the melancholy and sorrow comes from lives lost, and the most cynical would say, “for what”? In my worst moments, I’ve certainly felt that way. But it is very much the recognition that we live in a violent world where humans have not truly been seriously committed to peace and that wars continue to be fought that comprises some - but not all - of that melancholy.

It is also the recognition that there have been and are, men and women who generally feel that if the ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are to survive and flourish, however conflicted we are about how that should happen, then the country requires defense and vigilance. For that, absent proscription, we require volunteer enlistment. 

After the launch of Desert Storm, I was en route to Honduras and sitting next to me on the Boston-Miami leg was a young man in dress uniform. He was on his way to visit relatives before he redeployed. He was Black and had enlisted because, as he put it, where he was from, it was either that or join a gang. He loved the military, he said. He discovered a path where not only did his life have meaning, but he was able to do what he thought he was highest and best for his country. There was not an element of bravado or ego in this young man, and I learned more about the human spirit and this country, from him than I have from many of my elders and my contemporaries.

I thought about a friend of mine who passed recently, who had joined the Marines in the fifties. He was pretty open about it. He wanted to get out of Fourth Ward in Houston, didn’t have a clue about too much, and figured Uncle Sam would help fit the bill. He figured he’d see the world, at the very least, and he stayed on for a few years longer than his enlistment period. Korea had ended by the time he enlisted and he was counting on not seeing combat. He was right; he didn’t. But he returned with a greater sense of the country. As a Black man growing up at a time of great social change, he recognized that while imperfect, he had a voice and part of building freedom for all means fighting for it at home, as well as abroad.

I thought about my father who served in the Pacific Theater in World War II. He died when I was quite young, but I all I learned about him told me that he was a man of the highest character. My mother said he rarely talked about his experiences in the world, but one stands out. At Guam, he sent two younger men (after all, he was only in his mid-twenties and an officer) on recon. They never came back. My mother said that that was what brought the gravity of the war home to him. He surely knew lives would be sacrificed, but it wasn’t until that moment that he understood the cost.

What all these men have in common is that they either knew or came to know that they were in service to something far greater. I don’t mean the military on its own; I’m not a fan, but I recognize its necessity in this world. But this military is also in service to something that might sound abstract but really isn’t. 

It isn’t just the society, fraught as it is with inequity and divisiveness, that the military is protecting. It isn’t just the idea that other nefarious actors would do this country harm. We need to telescope out and ask why this country exists and yes, yes, with all its later accretions of colonialism and expansionism - and we’ll find that it resides in two documents that aver that all “men”, but we have grown as a society enough to know it means, everyone is created equal, and should be free to pursue fulfilled lives of life and liberty, however we care to define those. The other document ratifies and enshrines how the rights to this freedom should be preserved. That’s what the military serves. 

I’m not blind that there are issues with saying all this. I am well aware that not everyone who dons a uniform is a sterling individual of high morals and ideals. I am well aware that the military has become a recruitment platform of extremists and also, that our military budget expands beyond all reason to such a degree that the mere thought of allocating some minor amount of appropriations to other areas that could benefit the rest of the country is considered near-treasonous. This has less to do with the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and more to do with politicians who wish to parade their bona fides as patriots by building up funds for a bloated military at the expense of other legislation for areas the military is designed to protect. 

These same politicians are highly unlikely to have served or given much thought to the people who do serve when we come to consider the neglect, if not outright abuse, veterans endure. The gutting of the Veterans Administration belies their stated ideals. So where our representatives fail, all the way up to a so-called president that belittles and harangues the recent West Point graduating class with tales of “trophy wives” and prior to that has openly regarded those who serve as “losers”, it is up to us to shore up and stand with vets. It is up to us to honor and remember that which so many in office seem to not care for or about despite their protestations to the contrary.

Five ways/five organizations to make a difference

Each of these organizations assists veterans with access to healthcare, housing, job training, rehabilitation, and more. I really cannot stress enough how much work they do and how much slack they take up, particularly given the current state of affairs. 

Bob Woodruff Family Foundation (bobwoodrufffoundation.org)

Operation Second Chance (operationsecondchance.org) 

Fisher House Foundation (fisherhouse.org)

Operation Homefront (operationhomefront.org)

Hope for the Warriors (hopeforthewarriors.org)