Guest Opinion: On the occasion of the cancellation of the Memorial Day Parade

By Stewart Resmer

Today’s Memorial Day Parade reportedly has been canceled due to inclement weather.

While they who we fervently seek to recall and honor this day endured the challenges of the weather, we the living, as the beneficiaries of their full measure of sacrifice, are afforded the comfort, luxury, and conveniences we do now enjoy.

Humping a click or two in the rain is not exactly unheard of on dawn patrol or the battlegrounds and fields of history? Nor is the freezing weather that vanquished armies faced.

American GIs have endured the bitter cold since Washington’s rag-tag army crossed the Delaware.

Faced with frozen do-or-die circumstances at the pivotal Battle Of The Bulge, the war dragged on.

In Korea at the Chosin reservoir, US Marines slogged on in the bitter below-freezing cold that claimed as many casualties and injuries due to frostbite as hostile contact claimed.

In the more recent sandboxes of the Middle Eastern conflicts US soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines endured scorching desert heat in the performance of their duty and mission.

It’s OK to know the difference between what they endured beyond the shadows at the edges of freedoms shining and what we might endure today because of the rain and cooler temperatures and cancel today’s observances what with a chance of thunderstorms and lightning ground strikes?

I think they would not want us to be exposed and vulnerable to a life-threatening sudden white flash of lightning of the majesty of nature’s ground-shaking thunder. And somehow, to know that difference and be able to choose, I think, is exactly what they may have hoped for us because of their sacrifices so that we would not have to endure that which they endured instead.

We owe them another debt of gratitude for the privilege of being safe and warm as we wait for the rainbow of color and light on this day.

Amen

Stewart Resmer, a retired Hollywood stunt coordinator and limo driver from California, is a US Marine Corps veteran who served in the jungles of Vietnam from 1969-1970.