Please search out a veteran today ... put your hand over your heart and look him or her in the eyes and tell them you appreciate their service to our country! It was my great honor to speak today at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum Veterans Day Celebration at 11:00 on this the 11th day of the 11th month of the year. As a former Captain in the USAF, it has always been my sincerest pleasure to attend such events that say “Thank You!” to our veterans and service members. We cannot un-do the horrors of war, or bring back our fallen heroes, but there is one thing we can do to show our appreciation to those veterans who have returned from harms way with both visible and invisible injuries. We must honor our veterans every day of their lives and seek to help our veterans by meeting their needs ... it is our sacred duty! My prayer is that God will cause us never to forget that freedom isn’t free. And that He will continue to guide and protect our veterans and their families wherever they may be, that they will always be honored and appreciated by Americans everywhere. We must love, serve and support one another as we protect our God ordained and Constitutionally protected rights in the honorable and noble pursuit of the American Dream of Freedom. Having recently completed an election in which so many did not bother to exercise their hard fought for right to vote, the following quote from By Patriotically Anonymous comes to mind: ”I want you to close your eyes and picture in your mind the soldier at Valley Forge, as he holds his musket in his bloody hands. He stands barefoot in the snow, starved from lack of food, wounded from months of battle and emotionally scarred from the eternity away from his family surrounded by nothing but death and carnage of war. He stands tough, with fire in his eyes and victory on this breath. He looks at us … and tells us this: I gave you a birthright of Freedom born in the Constitution and now your children graduate too illiterate to read it. I fought in the snow barefoot to give you the Freedom to vote and you stay at home because it rains. I left my family destitute to give you the Freedom of speech and you remain silent on critical issues, because it might be bad for business. It’s the soldier, not the reporter, who gives you the Freedom of the press. It’s the soldier, not the poet, who gives you the Freedom of speech. It’s the soldier, not the campus organizer, who allows you to demonstrate. It’s the soldier who salutes the flag, serves the flag, whose coffin is draped with the flag that allows the protester to burn the flag! Hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need. Amen.” May God Bless our veterans, cause us to honor and respect their service by meeting their visible and invisible needs ... and May God Bless the USA!
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 18:54:00 +0000