Memorial Day 2017

In late May, 2017, I found myself the senior Officer in Operations (flying) on base, so I was the de facto Wing Commander for the long weekend. I sent out the following to the base populace:

 911 AW Airmen,

As we face the upcoming weekend and the beginning of "summer," I want to thank each of you on behalf of the leadership here at the 911th AW for all you have done over the past year to secure our great nation.  Your individual efforts, great and small, have made a difference. 

Memorial Day is a time of remembrance and reflection on sacrifices made by those similar to you; dedicated individuals and family members who put the nation and our way of life ahead of their own personal lives and fortunes.

On Monday, as you look forward to time with family and friends, I invite you to attend a local ceremony commemorating these sacrifices. Hopefully you will look to the sky and see or hear a 911th AW C-130 paying tribute to those comrades-in-arms who have paid the ultimate price on our behalf.  As Abraham Lincoln so eloquently pointed out, we must value their efforts and carry on their legacy for the future of our great nation.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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 from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

Thank you for your service.