Memorial Day Message 2025

I will never be able to express how grateful I am to those who gave their lives to protect our freedom. One of my first experiences of this sacrafice came when I was in charge of a small detail that voluteered to visit the elementary school aboard Camp Lejeune. We read and spent time with the children of service members and while the conversations were mostly light-hearted (one child asked if I knew his dad “GySgt Steve”), there was a moment that was so overwhelmingly emotional, it really made me think about what some of the families truly lose. I was sitting down talking to a little boy and I asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. Without a pause and a smile on his face, he said he wanted to be just like his mom and dad when he grew up because he was so proud of them. He told me they both died protecting our freedom and he wanted to be just like them.

To the service members who lost their lives, family, friends; and to the little boy who, while holding an unfathomable amount of loss in his heart, smiled and told me how proud he was:

Thank you