May we honor all veterans

Every Veterans Day for the past 14 years, I have tried to honor and remember veterans by writing an original column for Veterans Day. To accomplish this I have read or listened to countless speeches, researched facts and figures about those who have served, and drawn on my own relationships with friends, comrades and family who were in military service. Most people, including myself, have not found the words to adequately personify what ordinary Americans sacrificed serving their nation in war or peace and how that service should be honored.

However, one man succeeded in finding those words when writing about the military service given in a past war. Although many years have passed, the words are applicable to veterans of all of America's wars as well as those who maintained our defense in periods of peace.

On Nov. 19, 1863, when dedicating the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Abraham Lincoln said the military service of those who fought there was to ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

In a Dec. 3, 1863, letter to George Opdyke, Lincoln wrote, "Honor to the Soldier, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor also to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as he best can, the same cause -- honor to him, only less than to him, who braves, for the common good, the storms of heaven and the storms of battle."

Lincoln, in his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, called on the nation " *... to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan *..." It seems that is the least we can do for those who placed themselves in harm's way believing it was so this nation "shall not perish from this earth."

Jack Dragoni attended Boston College and served in the U.S. Army in Berlin and Vietnam. He resides in Chaffee, Missouri.