This weekend, don’t buy a Dodge

How to Honor Them

by Timothy Shriver, Chairman of Special Olympics
Newsweek, Washington Post

On this Memorial Day, we’re reminded to pay tribute to those who paid with their lives in the many wars our nation has fought in defense of our freedom and our beliefs. Memorial Day has its origins in the years after the Civil War as survivors on both sides struggled for ways to pay tribute to the dead—the largest number of fatalities by a long shot in any American conflict at home or abroad.

Sadly, many thousands more have fallen since the 19th Century as war after war has demanded the ultimate sacrifice of our young men and women-- the “last full measure of devotion” as Lincoln termed the bravery of the dead at Gettysburg. We pause today in humility and in sadness to remember, to pray, to pay tribute.

But to pay tribute begs a question: what can we possibly do to honor those who died? How can we, the living, do anything worthy of the bravery of those who fought? Are we really left with nothing more than parades and flag salutes as our role in remembering?

We’d do well to be reminded of the resounding challenge of the final phrases of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech today. “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’s the challenge of today: to define and embrace “the unfinished work.” And what a sad reflection on our times that our leaders have—in general—failed to sound the trumpet and summon us to any great cause or ideal. We celebrate Memorial Day this year, over 6 years since September 11, 2001, and with our troops sacrificing with life and limb, day after day, and what is our work as a nation?

Shopping? Approving funding for the troops drawn from debt and foreign loans? Paying premiums on our airline tickets to make up for the rising cost of gas?

(Continued here.)