This is our first Memorial Day post and we will repeat this post henceforth in future years.
To all veterans, we wish to honor and recognize you today. Thank you for what you have done for all of us.
On this day, let’s recall the words of our only poet-President as he stood at a battlefield where so many died. (And it was so short, it was finished before the photographer was ready).
(I want to share one key fact for all speech-givers. Lincoln did not just sketch a few words and deliver them. He sweated and toiled over every one. He practiced incessantly. Life is hard work. If you are a speaker, practice, practice, practice.)
Here are his immortal words:
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.
God bless you on this day. And Mr. Lincoln was mistaken - we do remember and always will. Thank you to all the men and women who fought for us.
Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
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Jeff Ogden