I have blatantly copied this from a local radio station personality because I couldn't have said it better myself. I heard it on the radio this morning - it was a replay from Wednesday's show - and was excited to find it on their website. (If you want to see the original transcript, go
here.)
From Bob of Bob & the Showgram on G105:
Hello my beach goin’, hamburger cookin’, memorial day special shoppin’ peoples!! Everybody who’s ready for a D-A-M-N B-R-E-A-K raise your hand! I’m with ya brothers and sistas!! A big fat Bubba burger with a few fresh onions, a little mustard, a little ketchup, a big bag of sour cream Ruffles, maybe a pickle spear and definitely a couple of beers that have just been pulled out of a ice cold cooler when the sun is goin down on the deck while I watch my kids giggling loud while they’re runnin’ through the sprinklers in the backyard for the 5 million th time with a little country music playin in the background and my best friend, Lu, beside me. Awww hell yeah Bo! I believe when you die if you’ve been living right that everybody gets their little slice of heaven made just for them and that’s what my slice will be like. Minus the mosquitoes and the indigestion later on that night.
But this weekend, like most other patriotic observances, have become anything but patriotic and anything but times of honor and remembrance. Not to be Donnie Downer, but I think is not only appropriate, but important to put this weekends original purpose into perspective for all of us. There have been a couple of stories in the N&O over the past couple of months that, for me, really put a face on just a few of the men who all to often just become a statistic on the evening news.
Like Staff Sgt. Eric A. McIntosh, 29 McIntosh was an infantry unit leader, and the most experienced of the four Marines, having joined the Corps in 1996, his wife, Cynthia, were thinking about having kids once the deployment -- his second to Iraq -- was done. His brother said Eric had his dad's sense of humor,. "You could tell either one of them a joke, and they'd remember it 20 years from now," he said, adding that he couldn't recall ever seeing his brother get upset about anything. In addition to his wife and his brother, he left his mother, Elizabeth; and sister, Lisa.
Cpl. Scott J. Procopio, 20 In high school, Procopio liked to work on old cars, and even though Scott was just 20, but he was already on his second Iraq tour. His family said he was in the Humvee's machine-gun turret when the bomb blast hit. He had married in September, and planned to leave the Marines once his enlistment was up to join the family's construction business. Michael, Scott’s brother said, "He always wanted to be the best at whatever he did, and he just sat down and figured out what service was the best. Then, he walked into the recruiter's office," "He said I don't want to hear your spiel, I want to be in the infantry and I want to go to Iraq. And he did."
He left his Kristal wife of just 8 month; his father, Kevin; mother, Mary and 3 brothers Michael, 22, Greg, 17, and Mark, 14.
Petty Officer Third Class Lee Hamilton Deal, 23 was the place kicker for his high school football team that won a string of state titles. He was deployed to Iraq on March 25. His mother visited with him in Wilmington the week before he left. The last time Melanie Deal talked with her son, Lee, was the week before Mother's Day. She said "He had flowers delivered -- tulips," . During their early Mother's Day conversation, his mom wanted to know if her son had received the DVDs of the Master's golf tournament she had recorded for him. "He was a big golf fan and his mother said that. "He tried to play every chance he got whenever he was in North Carolina. Lee was a Navy sailor, and three days after Mother's Day on May 17, Lee Deal, was killed in Iraq.
All of the men that I just mentioned were stationed at Camp Lejeune, right here at home. And most importantly, all of these men risked their lives voluntarily, to protect mine. Last night I asked myself, other than for my family, was there any cause that I felt so passionately about that I would risk my life for it? And the fact is that while I feel very passionately about many things in my life, I’ve never voluntarily, put on a uniform, picked up a weapon and fought for my country. A country that many times I take for granted, but I do love so very much. But here I sit, nearly 40 years old with a great family, job and all of the freedoms that this country affords us never having to lift a finger because these three men and hundreds of thousands before me were brave enough to do what I didn’t.
I’ll just say this. While I imagine that Eric McIntosh, Scott Procopio and Lee Deal would want us to enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend with our cook-outs and our family trips and the like, I don’t see how you can hear about these men, hear about their families and the countless others just like them and not feel indebted to them as well as their families. Whether you agree with the war that is going on now in the middle east, whether or not you agreed with the conflict in Vietnam or any other of the conflicts where American men and women have given their lives the fact is we owe them the respect and gratitude for what they have given.
If you know anyone who’s son or daughter, husband or wife, or brother or sister gave their life four our country, the least we can do is to stop by their house on the way to your beach trip or store for more buns and say “I just wanted to say thank you. I know this weekend is probably difficult, but I wanted you to know I appreciate what your son or daughter or husband or wife did for our country. Then privately to yourself when you get back in your car, say a little prayer for that solider, that their little slice of heaven is all they ever dreamed of, and Happy Memorial Day.
