Back when Memorial Day was called Decoration Day…
… my Dad and Mom would take us to plant pansies on the graves of his parents and brother and my Mom’s little sister in the South Lead Cemetery. It was a valuable lesson for us children that life is God-given and precious, and loved ones who pass away are still loved and not forgotten. I never met these ancestors whose graves we reverently tended, but I have inherited freedom because they had the courage to risk leaving Austria…-Hungary (now Croatia) for the promise of America. When my Grandparents died, Dad was only four. He and his siblings were sent back to the “Old Country”. The three boys returned as adults to the town where their parents and brother were laid to rest; their sister had a family then and stayed behind in Europe. Dad was just young enough to be conscripted into the US Army in 1941, and soon found himself on Omaha Beach. He fought all through the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge with Gen. Omar Bradley’s 702nd Tank Destroyer Battalion and nearly died in the Rhineland, but God was on the battlefield that day, and he lived to realize his American dream of freedom to work, raise a family, and worship without interference from government. When I put flowers on Dad’s grave – and those of the 14 loved ones we will decorate this weekend, I will feel the shame of being a member of the generation that has devalued and rejected the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents. My generation has put our very freedom at risk and enslaved future generations to government masters in order to pay for the excesses of today. There is no better time than Memorial Day to remember the source of America’s greatness: the recognition that our rights as free men are God-given, not government-given. When we meet them in eternity, it will be hard to explain to those who took the chances, who endured prison and loss, and who bought our independence with their blood and toil why we now prefer to live “in dependence”.
***Tonchi Weaver*** is a conservative activist and Life and Liberty News contributor
