Unfinished Work

Reflections on Memorial Day 2025, The Gettysburg Address, and Honoring the Fallen

Every year, my little city's Memorial Day parade feels like the heartbeat of the community. Neighbors spill out onto sidewalks and lawn chairs collect in Monument park. Kids in polyester uniforms march with the band or scouts, or they carry flags, or toss candy from the back of a truck. It’s an annual civic reunion of sorts. The trees are green, the wind is soft, and the people come on foot.

It’s always been one of my favorite local events. I think our community's participation shows the young what it means to honor those who nobly sacrificed for the rest of us.

Listening

I’ve had at least one child march every Memorial Day for almost two decades. This year, I didn't have any chaperone responsibilities, and I was able to watch and listen.

Despite cloudy skies, neighbors gathered for this year's Memorial Day ceremonies with clear purpose.

I listened closely when a high school student stepped up to the mic and read the Gettysburg Address. You've heard Abraham Lincoln's speech from that blood-soaked battlefield, consecrating the dead. When was the last time you really thought about his famous words and celebrated message?

Lincoln's speech sadly doesn't age. He speaks of devotion, of sacrifice, and the importance of memory.

Local veterans sit in quiet remembrance as the school band plays a tribute to the armed forces.

Remembering

So I remember with gratitude those who wore our country's uniform. My grandmother, who served as the Air Force’s chief nurse of the Pacific during World War II. My uncle, who did a tour in Korea and two in Vietnam. Friends and family who served in modern conflicts, and who still carry the grief of comrades lost. I honor them and the millions of others who gave everything they had for an idea. An imperfect, evolving, stubborn idea: that liberty and justice belong to all.

Lincoln (circled in red) at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863, moments before delivering his Address. One of only a few known photos of the day.

Honoring

The US is still very much divided on the subject of liberty and justice for all, and the cost of our divisions are always highest for the vulnerable.

The price of silence and inaction is steep. Lincoln said,

“It is for us the living… to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

I thought of his message today, with the sights and sounds of my hometown parade still fresh. I was driving along a local highway behind a motorcycle with the stars and bars on grand display.

We have no heritage of the Confederacy here in the northeast, and I genuinely can think of no reason to fly that flag outside of an overt expression of racism. So many Americans died and were harmed under that flag; it's a traitor's banner in any context.

Hey, freedom of speech without government suppression is indeed an inalienable right. But it doesn't exclude the speaker from public condemnation. And it doesn't exclude the rest of us from the responsibility of denouncing traitorous racism.

The Work

I believe our work begins with remembering and honoring those Americans who paid what Lincoln called "the full last measure of devotion." I therefore remember George Floyd, Matthew Shepard, and Vincent Chin. I remember Brandon Teena, Breonna Taylor, and Heather Heyer. I remember Amadou Diallo, and Ethan Saylor. If you don't know some of those names, look them up. They are just a tiny sample of American civilians who died in modern times in the crossfire of our nation's "unfinished work ."

The political discourse right now is uncomfortable, but if we disengage, we dishonor the fallen — the soldiers. the activists, the people going about their business, the brave, the ordinary, the gone to soon. Unless we pick up the work, flag waving and patriotic display is at best performative and at worst hypocritical.

Unless . . .

" . . . 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."