This Memorial Day, Remember Them

A memorial keeps remembrance alive.

To memorialize something or someone is to record, to remember, to recite to the world, to every generation, that which should never be forgotten: our heritage, our history, the human cost of war.

Monuments are especially helpful memorials. An art form that captures the imagination, invokes sentiment and connects us to specific events, time periods and people.

Being in the presence of art is to experience with all of our senses what otherwise seems only conceptual. Like when a person touches the name of a fallen or missing hero on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Fingertips press against chiseled dents in polished granite. Souls are stirred. We remember.

You need not travel far to touch history. To remember. This Memorial Day weekend, consider attending the at the Woodbury Lions Veterans Memorial, set for 11 a.m. Monday, May 28.

Or take the family to Fort Snelling, where Memorial Day events are scheduled Saturday, Sunday and Monday. There will be military drills, cannon firings, hearth cooking, blacksmithing as well as hands-on activities for visitors. On Monday, Fort Snelling will present a military history timeline with costumed volunteers reenacting historical military conflicts.

Prefer a looser itinerary for your holiday weekend? Maybe incorporate a historical stop into your schedule. A break, a hush, a moment of silence at Soldiers and Sailors Cemetery in Hastings, the Ships Bells in Minneapolis, the U.S.S. Swordfish in St. Paul.

Books as memorial: Read and connect to historical wartime experiences through the art of literature. Many books can educate and illuminate the facts of history and wartime. But I appreciate stories that go beyond. That explore the intertwined courage and fragility of the human spirit under pressure, in combat, pushed to places I strain to conceive being sent.

By reading their stories, we remember them. We honor them. Books on shelves become like chiseled dents carved in granite. A memoriam.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a World War II bombardier who crashed into the Pacific. Zamperini survived on a raft, became a prisoner of war and overcame extreme deprivation, suffering and bitterness. I didn’t know how much I didn’t know until I read this book. A lot of history was made in between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian is a classic work of writing that explores the experience of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Also from that era: In Retrospect, a memoir by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, provides insight into policy positions and decisions of that tumultuous time in our country.

More recently, War by Sebastian Junger, a journalist imbedded with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan. His book details life and loss as well as the boredom and brutality of modern warfare. An award-winning documentary was produced based on Junger’s book. It’s titled Restrepo, after a platoon medic who was killed in action. I recommend it.

This weekend, touch a piece of history. Take a moment. Say a prayer. Remember.

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