JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- Senior leaders of Joint Base Lewis-McChord joined veterans and friends from across the region Monday at the Fort Lewis Cemetery for the 2012 Memorial Day ceremony. More than 250 gathered at the JBLM cemetery to honor the sacrifices of those who have died in service to the nation.
Major General Richard Thomas, commanding general of Western Regional Medical Command, and Col. Wyn Elder, commander of 62nd Airlift Wing, together laid a wreath at the headstone marking an unknown Soldier and joined with a crowd of local civic leaders and retired military luminaries to pay their respects.
Thomas made the keynote remarks, but the I Corps Secretary of the General Staff began the program reading a memorial statement sent by U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta.
"Today is a day to pay tribute to those who fought and died for our nation," Panetta said. "Today we remember the more than 6,400 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who have paid the ultimate price for us to live in safety over the past 10 years of war. Because of their sacrifice, the torch of freedom burns bright."
Thomas called the day an "emotional challenge" to remember and pay tribute to those who have sacrificed and fallen in service to the nation.
"We are privileged to honor them and their lives," he said.
Thomas drew attention to the many more who, as a result of their service, today carry mental and physical wounds. He called upon those who remain to renew their commitments to the young people who fight the nation's wars, and by volunteering signal their willingness to endure hardships.
"As we ask America's young men and women to potentially give their lives in service to this country, it is certainly not too much to ask or expect that we would dedicate our professional lives to them," the Western Medical Region commander said.
Thomas traced the observance of Memorial Day to the period immediately following the Civil War, when a group of Southern women visited a cemetery in Columbus, Miss. to decorate the graves of their Confederate relatives. They noted that the graves of the North's dead had been left unattended and forgotten. The local ladies decorated the Union graves so well that there was no way to distinguish between the resting places of the two sides' fallen. Local newspapers carried the story and word spread when larger publications across the country reprinted it. May 30, 1868 was set aside to honor the nation's war dead, an observance that became a national holiday.
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