From Sharon Hetherington: This evening citizens gathered to dedicate the new Veterans Memorial in Snellville. The ceremony was moving and humbling for so many reasons. My neighbor, Jim Leiker, Chapter Service Officer for the Disabled American Veterans Gwinnett Chapter 90, addressed the crowd with the following speech. I will never be the same after hearing these words. Please read them aloud to your teenagers and try to get them to understand what happened and why they must remember and honor American veterans. Memorial Day is a rough day for me. Its a day of remembering. Remembering can be curse when youve spent years trying to forget. Its even worse when you get mad at yourself for not being able to remember. Its strange that you forget so many things you want to remember and remember so much that you really just want to forget. I spent 11 months and 28 days in sunny Southeast Asia. I came back physically whole. No “members missing tag on this Marine. By the grace of God, good training, and just plain pure dumb luck, I suffered no more than a slight hearing loss, a concussion or two, and 45 years of mixed-blessing memories. Ive been a good husband to my wife, a lousy father to my two daughters, a mediocre son to my mother and a reasonably successful employee to five employers over the years. With these results, I consider myself as doing better than average when compared to many of my fellow veterans. The grace of God and good luck still abound. But Memorial Day is not a day for self-evaluation or selfish thoughts. So I turn my remembrances to other people, places, and things. I remember heat. Heat, that kept you from getting a full breath for weeks. Heat, that sapped your strength so that you were beyond exhaustion after a minor exertion. Heat, that made you tired and kept you from sleeping. Heat, that made you sweat buckets. Heat, that made you freezing cold at 70 degrees. I remember lush green mountains that always seemed to go up not down. I remember red clay earth that was sticky enough to glue a truck in place, slippery enough to make it impossible to stand on, and dusty enough to choke you into a coughing fit like a bad cigar. I remember rice paddies. They could get you killed or save your life. Dikes stop bullets but can leave you exposed if youre dumb enough to walk on them. The water smelled of feces but was better than not drinking at all. I remember rain. Rain, that broke the intolerable heat then never stopped. Rain, that was as gentle as silk or as stinging as a nest of bees. Rain, that let you get a good clean shower and rotted your feet til they bled. I remember the sun. The sun that created the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets Ive ever seen in my life. The sun that you couldnt look at...if you ever wanted to see again. The sun that you could feel without touching it. I remember a moon that shone so bright you could read a map by it. I remember moonlight dancing on foliage that made you see nothing one minute and imagine a host of slinking enemy the next. Ill never forget the colors of an explosion close at hand. The white center bleeding out to a yellow ring surrounded by black rolling smoke was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I remember the orange and green tracers dancing lazily through the night, while I prayed that none came to roost on me. But above all this, I remember people, faces, personalities, and human events that still crowd my days and nights with pleasure and pain. I can remember entire conversations and events in explicit detail. I cannot remember the names of more than a few, and I dont know why. Shouldnt this be the other way around? I remember the parting face of the Huey jock, who took an RPG in the nose 100 yards after he lifted off from leaving me in a clearing. I remember every detail of the guy who hung himself 2 weeks before he was going back to the world. I remember the guitar songs taught to me by the kid from Boston, who drove a jeep over a 105 shell buried on a dirt road and tripped the trap. I remember the quiet calm of the guy who told me he was sorry and assured me that I would be O.K. after he stepped on a mortar-round booby trap. All this while I held what was left of him in my arms, and we filled him with enough morphine to kill a horse because he was cut in half below the waist; and we knew he wouldnt survive the medevac ride back to DaNang. Of the hundreds I knew, I kick myself for remembering so few; especially on this Memorial Day when I should be able to remember each and every one. They are the ones who paid for this Memorial Day. This is their day. I will not spoil it by forgetting even one of their number. God help me, I will remember. From this day forth I will carry their memory and spirit with me as a living memorial to their sacrifice and dedication to God, country, duty, and honor. They shall not pass gently into the night as long as I have breath in my body to shout to the world... REMEMBER, REMEMBER...For Gods sake, remember.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 07:54:20 +0000
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