Memorial Day

While enjoying the first official summer weekend, Vermonters should pause a moment and reflect. What is the meaning of Memorial Day? It provides us an opportunity to honor the sacrifices that make our freedom possible. Some have sacrificed greatly so that all of us can have a country of freedom and opportunity. President Abraham Lincoln wrote in his 1864 letter to a mother who lost five sons during the Civil War:

Dear Madam, I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

The sacrifice needed for freedom is also made by the families who remain at home. Mothers know dearly the cost of life. Vermont families have given greatly in all our nation’s wars. The characteristics of independence, loyalty and the refusal to leave a job undone are clearly embedded in the Vermont character and have made our Yankee Vermont soldiers among the best defenders of freedom for generations. Many have not returned home.

It is important for every Vermonter this weekend to reflect on what it means to live in freedom. Many of our neighbors will be celebrating this weekend with a loved one overseas serving under the flag of our nation. May we never forget those who have fought for our freedom, and may we celebrate the lives of those who are willing to make sure America remains the land of the free and the home of the brave. And please remember the many silent sacrifices of those Vermont families who wait at home for the safe return of their soldier.

Carolyn Branagan
2010 Vermont Mother of the Year