MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Day is a time to appreciate military veterans who have served and are currently serving to keep our nation free. We often take our freedoms for granted and seldom fully understand the sacrifice so many of our best and brightest have made over the years.

My dad is a veteran of World War II and saw combat in Italy, including the famous battle at the Rapido River. He was belatedly awarded the Bronze Star with two oak clusters by Congressman Peter Hoekstra (see photo above).

Below is an excerpt from the speech President Ronald Reagan delivered at Pointe du Hoc, France, where U.S. Rangers fought an incredible battle to reclaim Europe from the evil of fascism. I hope you find President Reagan’s remarks a reminder of who we are, what matters most and of the America we must rediscover if we are going to prevail in the fight against the new fascism of militant Islam.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They thought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” …

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

EXPECTATIONS

We all have expectations. Some of you have optimistic expectations that things will work out and you will be able to graduate, or expectations that the new job and the larger check that comes with it, will set you up to be debt free.

We enter marriage with expectations. Some of you have experienced expectations becoming a reality, while other expectations have gone unmet.

Here's the point...I had pretty good size expectations that the Tigers would roll through their 162 game schedule and score so many runs that it wouldn't make any difference how many times the pitching staff failed. My expectation was that they would muscle their way through the playoffs and into the world series and steamroll the Arizona Diamondbacks (my favorite national league team)and bring some hardware and a new pennant to Comerica Field.

I've come to a realization that these expectations will not be met this year, and further found that it is possible to have too many great players.

I expect some will be traded or released soon. See ya Sheff and Carlos...back to third Brandon. Hello hot Mudhen prospects. These, too, are expectations.