Memorial Day Speech: Honor Day: Memorial Day

Welcome to today's ceremony and thank you for attending. I am honored to be able to speak with you today on such an important occasion. We are here to honor our former service members and to remember the sacrifices they have made in honor of duty, honor, and country.
The service members we honor today came from all walks of life, but they shared several fundamental qualities. They possessed pride, courage, self-determination, and a dedication to duty and integrity ~ all qualities needed to serve a cause larger than one's self.
Many of them did not ask to leave their homes to fight on distant battlefields. Many never volunteered. These men did not answer the call to go to war because they loved fighting. They rose to the nation's call because

Today, our troops continue to make the ultimate sacrifices, and even as we lose troops, more Americans step forward to say, I am ready to serve. They follow in the footsteps of generations of fine Americans who have served.
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day until 1967, got its start from the Civil War and the 620,000 Union and Confederate Americans killed, and the thousands wounded or maimed. The grieving families from both sides decorated the graves of their lost soldiers with flowers and wreaths in remembrance.
On June 28, 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which moved four holidays, including Memorial Day, from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend. Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. This has contributed to the general public's nonchalant observance of Memorial Day. Memorial Day, since 1971, has come to mark the beginning of summer.
In observance of Memorial Day, the flag of the United States is raised briskly to the top of the staff and then solemnly lowered to the half-staff position, where it remains only until noon. It is then raised to full-staff for the remainder of the

At noon, their memory is raised by the living, who resolve not to let their sacrifice be in vain, but to rise up in their stead and continue the fight for liberty and justice for all.
Our American flag is a symbol of the freedoms that we fight so diligently to protect. The American Flag is a symbol of the freedoms that we celebrate and hold sacred. It stands as a reminder to each of us of the sacrifices made by the men and women throughout our nation so that this flag could stand tall. Let us not forget that we will ever see it wave as a nation of free people because of the lives that we honor each Memorial Day.
So, where did the idea to sell poppies come from?
In 1915, during WWI, Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a physician in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, wrote the poem, "In Flanders Fields". Its opening lines refer to the fields of poppies that grew among the soldiers' graves in Flanders. Their paper-thin red petals were the first signs of life and renewal and inspired him to pen perhaps the most famous wartime poem:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on