"Memorial Day is a day to honor and remember the sacrifices made by American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen to ensure and preserve our freedoms. They perished during a cold and difficult struggle to bring forth the warmth and prosperity of peace.
A desire to protect those freedoms has guided us from the shot heard round the world to today and too many times in between. In 1941 when the United States was on the precipice of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the Four Freedoms during his State of The Union address to Congress. He articulated those freedoms as:
The freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world;
The freedom of every person to worship God in their own way - everywhere in the world;
The freedom from want or economic security leading to a healthy peacetime life;
And the freedom from fear, specifically the fear of armed national aggression.
In World War II, 291,557 Americans, 355 from Plymouth county alone, died to ensure that Americans continue to enjoy those fundamental freedoms that underpin our great nation.
I think about FDR’s Four freedoms and the role that we all play today in ensuring that our freedoms prevail. Are we as one nation doing enough to uphold the legacy we have inherited, which was paid for with the blood, sweat and tears of our veterans?
We, the beneficiaries of those freedoms must continuously renew our efforts to ensure that those brave souls buried in graves, marked and unmarked across the globe did not sacrifice their lives in vain. We must never forget them. They deserve us to honor them with a never-ending struggle to build a more perfect union.
I ask you, with me to remember those we lost, and continue to support those currently deployed in harm's way providing us the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful day in our great nation. May we be as courageous as the fallen in our duty to never forget and to pass along to the next generation the commitment to honor our service members that we honor today.
And may the sacrifices of a long and difficult winter, herald an endless summer of American Freedom.
Thank you."