Over the coming weeks I will provide a series of articles celebrating America as we turn 250 years old as a nation.
It seemed fitting we kick off this series featuring Memorial Day. The remembrance has a way of putting everything else in perspective. Here in Pender, as in many of our great communities across the district and state, the flags went up, the cemeteries were tended with quiet care, and there was a stillness to the morning that you don't find on any other day of the year.
The Memorial Day weekend has become a "kick off to the summer" full of family fun and celebration. I hope though we never forget that sound of silence. It is reverence for those who have paid the sacrifice for those of us still here, to go and enjoy that family time over a long weekend. It’s a stillness that was earned — paid for in full by men and women who never made it home. As we approach America's 250th birthday this summer, I find myself thinking not just about how far this country has come, but about the cost of the journey.
Stars and Stripes, the publication that has traveled alongside American service members through every conflict since the Civil War, reminded us that the United States had lost more than 1.3 million military members in service to this nation — a number so large it nearly defies comprehension. If you have ever been to Arlington National Cemetery you likely felt the magnitude seeing the rows of those lost service members. I highly recommended every Nebraskan take the time to visit that site when in the Washington, D.C. area. The number laid to rest in Arlington is over 400,000.
Here in Nebraska, we carried our own portion of that weight. Our state's role of the fallen reaches back to the Civil War. Even though we weren't a state yet, soldiers from the territory joined the conflict. In every war since, Nebraskans have been lost when our nation called. The names on our local memorials are not strangers — they are neighbors, classmates, the kids who grew up on the farms and in the small towns that defined this state.
At 3 p.m. on Memorial Day, Congress asked every American to pause for a National Moment of Remembrance. I pray you took that minute. If you missed it, I encourage you to find time for it as the summer progresses — not as a formality, but as a genuine act of gratitude.
Stars and Stripes covers the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington each year, last year noting the image of a riderless horse — boots turned backward in the stirrups — moving down Constitution Avenue in honor of the warrior who would never ride again. That image stayed with me after seeing it. It is ancient and solemn and absolutely American.
As we celebrate 250 years of that remarkable experiment in self-government, Memorial Day was the right place to have this series begin. Not with fireworks or fanfare, but with names of those we know. With silence. With the understanding that every freedom we enjoy — every right we debate, every opportunity we pursue — has been underwritten by someone who chose to stand between us and the cost of losing it. Nebraska has never had a shortage of those people, and we should never have a shortage of gratitude for them.
