• May 25, 2015
  • Mark LaCour
  • 0

Memorial Day

Today is not about backyard barbecue’s or three day weekends. Its not about cooler’s full of beer or traveling to visit friends and family. Today is not about you and your life. Its about those that paid the ultimate price, so you could lead the life that you desire.

Today is a time for ALL Americans to think about those who have died in service of the United States of America. To remember those brave men and woman who entered into harms way to protect an ideal. To protect a way of life. To protect freedom and liberty. To protect you.

I am honored to have served my country. I have a band of brothers and sisters around the world that spent part of their life serving in the USMC. The motto of the Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis, which means “always faithful”.

We rattle off “Semper Fi” to each other as a greeting or instead of saying goodbye. Such a short but sweet bit of Latin that just rolls off the tongue. Now that I am older I see deeper meaning in these two words.

I now no longer see it as the motto of the USMC, I see it as a motto that all Americans should embrace. Always faithful as as American, regardless of our differences. Regardless of what is going on in the world. Regardless of what is changing or needs to be changed.

In the future when I am no longer here, there will be new Americans running our country. And I want them to be “always faithful” to our nation, to each other and to the American ideals. I want my son to grow up knowing that if need be, his fellow Americans will step into harms way to protect him. To protect his way of life. His freedoms. His liberty. Because they are always faithful.

Remember the fallen today, and lets always be faithful to each other.

I think the great communicator put it best:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We did not pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free

-Ronald Reagan