Community Corner

'Live and Make Them Proud'

On Memorial Day, an OPRF student's sincere advice for classmates and the community.

In honor of Memorial Day, we're reprinting the address given by junior Alexandria Frisch at Friday's assembly at the school.

Good morning.

Throughout the course of Memorial Day weekend, this country is bound to be inundated with political speeches about the pros and cons of war. It’s easy to use Memorial Day as an opportunity to step up on your soapbox and spread your own political ideology. But in the chaos of people shouting about foreign policy and spouting speeches at us about why their position on war best honors our soldiers, the true message of Memorial Day is often lost.

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What many people forget is that Memorial Day actually began as Decoration Day. In the devastation of post civil-war America, Union and Confederate citizens alike took a day to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers. Tangled in the web of confusion and despair that follows war, the people of this country needed to stand as one united nation and honor all who had fought to preserve this country. So they sewed flags, and wove wreaths, and placed these tributes with small tokens of their love on the graves of those who had fallen.

And the tradition continues today. On Memorial Day, patriotic citizens, scouts, and veterans place flags in our national cemeteries. As one walks down the rows of identical graves in the cemetery at Omaha beach in Normandy, France, which marks the resting place for those 9387 Americans who died during the D-day invasions, one is struck by the immense love put toward keeping the graves of our brave soldiers ornamented with symbols of our respect. Nearly every grave is adorned with something, whether it is a flag, a teddy bear, or blossoming flower. In the Jewish tradition, pebbles are placed on the edges of headstones to symbolize that the deceased have not been forgotten. At Omaha Beach, Jewish and Christian graves alike have pebbles on the headstones in reverence. But what is truly striking are the graves of the unknown soldiers. These soldiers, who died nameless, never identified by their families, are given headstones inscribed with the simple phrase “Here rests in honored glory a Comrade in Arms known but to God.” And on those graves, just like the others, there are flags of all nations, roses in bloom, and cards with messages of love that transcend the decades. What is remarkable about the tradition started by Decoration Day, continued with Memorial Day, is that our honor and respect is not discriminatory. At the Vietnam memorial wall, people leave gifts for soldiers that they never knew. Despite the fact that the Vietnam War polarized our country like no war since the Civil War, the memorial wall is constantly adorned with anonymous gifts to the fallen dead. Everything from baseball cards, to peanut butter cookies, to the Purple Heart medals of veterans, to vintage motorcycles are left at this site. And even though we may disagree about that war, about our current war, about the nature of war itself, we come together on Memorial Day to honor the bravery and courage of those who gave their lives to defend our country and preserve our future.

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This, right now, is my moment to celebrate Memorial Day, to honor our soldiers. So this weekend, find your own. When you glance at the newspaper lying on your kitchen table in the morning and see the names of those who have given their lives for our country, take a moment to say a silent thank you. When you’re out late Saturday night enjoying the freedom of a three-day weekend, take a second to glance up at the stars. Think about the fact that somewhere, half way across the world, a soldier is looking up at the same sky as you, ready to put himself into harm’s way so that you can see that beautiful sky. As individuals in High School, it’s hard to think of how we can sufficiently honor our soldiers. We can’t hold parades, we can’t make policy decisions, and we certainly can’t snap our fingers and make the world’s problems go away so people don’t have to fight each other anymore.

What we can do, is live the best lives that we can.

The highest level of respect that we can show the men and women who have given their lives so that we can have every opportunity is to take those opportunities. We are lucky enough to live in a community that offers us a terrific school system, ample opportunities to volunteer, many ways to get involved.

We owe it to those who have died before us to respect their sacrifice by doing all that we can do to be productive human beings. Every moment that you live is a moment to respect and honor our fallen soldiers. So live, and make them proud.


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