As we celebrate the past and now of those that have stood for all of us over the years let us give thanks that we can look to a brighter future.

Here are some rather appropriate words written over 150 years ago that ring so true today:

“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.”

And to a nation divided:

“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

Both attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

Naturalization Ceremony 2008 Gines Ramon Pedraza, E6, New River, Cuba Dion Leo Pierre, E6, Ft Bragg, Tinidad & Tabago

copywrite 2014 Ed Zirkle