Reflections on Memorial Day Weekend 2025

In the spring of 1942 my father graduated from high school. He would go on to graduate from Houghton College as a pre-ministerial student, and get his Masters Degree in English at Alfred. He would raise a family and serve as a pastor, a missionary, and a bible school administrator.

He had a long and distinguished career that touched the lives of many. But before he could do any of that, there was something else he had to do. 

When my father turned 18, the world was at war. Adolf Hitler had conquered most of Europe and the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. So when my father graduated from high school, the first thing he did was go to the Army recruiter’s office and enlist to serve our country.

He did it because our country was standing with people all around the world, who had lost their freedoms to ruthless dictators. 

My dad was not a violent man—not  a “warrior” by nature. In fact, my Dad was gentle, kind, and actually a bit timid. He had a deep and abiding faith that led him to a life of service to others. But before he could do that he knew that he had to do whatever he could to fight for freedoms that were lost or being threatened around the world

My dad served as a radio operator on B-25 bombers, flying combat missions in Italy and Germany. He was never injured on any of those combat missions, and his plane always made it safely back to the base. Many of his comrades in arms were not so lucky. 

In all, over 16 million Americans served in the Armed Forces in World War II. Of that number, over 407,000 were killed in action, over 670,000 were wounded, and Between 120,000 and 130,000 were captured and imprisoned as POWs.

While we are deeply grateful for the service of people like my Dad, on Memorial Day, the ones we specially honor are those who went off to serve, and never came back.

This burden of service and sacrifice was born by young men and women from across the whole range of our society. During World War II, approximately 1.6 million people of color served: 1 million African Americans, about 500,000 Hispanic Americans, 33,000 Japanese Americans (800 Japanese-American soldiers died fighting for our country—even though our government had rounded up many of their families and put them into camps just because of their race!), 24,674 Native Americans, 20,000+ Chinese Americans, 16,000+ Filipino Americans. 

More than 350,000 American women joined the United States Armed Forces during World War II —432 of these servicewomen died in service during the war. 

And sacrifices were shared by families across all income ranges—from the poorest of the poor, to the family of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose eldest son Theodore was killed on Utah Beach in the D-Day Normandy invasion.

And of course, World War II was only one war. Every generation has seen brave men and women give their lives to win and protect our freedoms—over 1.25 million of them in all. On Memorial Day, we remember all of them. 

We do this not to glorify war, or to make a fetish out of violence. We do it because when we do not remember the sacrifice and struggle of so many, we can easily lose our perspective and take our freedoms for granted.

We remember our history, so that we can learn from mistakes we’ve made in the past, and avoid repeating them today and in the future. 

As people of faith that is why we revere our Scriptures and re-read them all the time. We remember both the heroes of our faith and those who failed to live up to it or even betrayed it. We do this so that we can emulate the virtuous examples and so that we can avoid being victims of those who misrepresent our faith; who would mislead us, and betray our faith.

The 18th Century British philosopher Edmund Burke wrote that “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Mark Twain qualified that a bit, when he put it this way: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” 

As a person who has always studied history, I really identified with a cartoon I recently came across. In it, one person complains to the other: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it!”

Today in our country, there is a movement to erase important parts of our history. Government agencies are literally deleting historical records about the struggles and sacrifices made through our history in the fight for civil rights, for women’s rights, for LGBTQ rights. 

Funding is being cut for museums that tell important parts of our history and help us avoid making the same kinds of mistakes we made in the past. Programs that lift up inspirational accomplishments of women, and people of color; programs that encourage the growth of diversity, equity and inclusion in this country are being discontinued. 

I think this is a very dangerous path—purging libraries and historical records; denying that the struggles of so many Americans were important parts of our shared history; pretending that unpleasant, shameful parts of our history just didn’t happen. 

This is not only disrespectful—it is dangerous. We memorialize past struggles and achievements so that we can remember who we are, and to show our gratitude for those who came before us; who fought, struggled, and sometimes died to establish and maintain our freedoms. 

We remember the good; the noble, and the valiant to inspire ourselves to show those qualities in our lives. We remember the bad; the painful, and the infamous to help us determine to never again allow such inhumanity.

Our Jewish friends remember the Passover to celebrate the deliverance and freedom their people experienced, when Moses brought them up out of slavery—but it is also a reminder that having experienced the horror of living in bondage, they should never treat others as they were treated. 

We have Holocaust memorials and museums so we can be determined to never again allow racism and authoritarianism to grow to the point that they bring on genocide. We remind ourselves of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow, to remind ourselves that we are capable of this kind of evil, and to determine to never again allow this to happen.

We remember both the good and the bad in our history so that we can imitate the good, and avoid repeating the bad. When we teach our children about our history and remember the inhuman brutality of slavery, or the shameful way Native Americans have been treated, or the long and painful road we’ve had to walk to see civil rights granted to all of us, that is not being unpatriotic. That is an appeal to what is best about us, and a reminder that we must always be vigilant against the voices that appeal to our baser instincts; to our selfish, hateful instincts. It is a reminder that there is still work to be done, to make this country a better place, and that we all need to dedicate ourselves to doing that work.

The memories of fallen countrymen can be living memories inside each one of us if they inspire us to cherish those freedoms and to fight to extend those freedoms to others.

This is the kind of living memory Abraham Lincoln called on us all to preserve, in his Gettysburg Address. Lincoln had been asked to speak a few words of dedication for the cemetery in that little sleepy little Pennsylvania town that had been a bloody battlefield for three days. Lincoln acknowledged that it was fitting and proper to honor the dead; to dedicate their graveyard. 

But he insisted there was another dedication that mattered even more: 

“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.”

The soldiers who gave their lives have done their job. They gave everything, so that we could have an opportunity to be free. Now it is up to us, to be just as critically and vitally engaged. It is up to us to take up their banner. 

We must find the strength to be as devoted as they were. We have to be determined—to “be resolved” as Lincoln put it—to finish the work they started. They earned us our freedoms. It is up to us to keep those freedoms , and to extend them to others: “… that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”