This Sunday night on your local PBS station, the public network will televise its annual National Memorial Day Concert at 7 p.m (CST).
Drafted at the age of 19, Allen Hoe was a combat medic in Vietnam. His service earned him a Bronze Star Medal, a Purple Heart, and a Combat Medic Badge.
Providence spared his life in Southeast Asia, as it had that of his own father, who was a ship fitter at Pearl Harbor and served during World War II. That generational protection, however, ran out for his son, 1st Lt. Nainoa K. Hoe, who was gunned down by a sniper during combat in Iraq in 2005.
According to the PBS website, Hoe and his son will be one of the featured stories on Sunday night’s program.
Statistics on the Department of Veterans Affairs website (updated in November 2023) indicate the numbers who have died in battle or “in theater.” Many came home in flag-draped coffins, others buried at sea, some on foreign soil, and some whose remains were never retrieved.
The statistical numbers all have names. Memorial Day is our chance to learn the stories of these patriots like Nainoa Hoe and then continue to tell them.
We honor the patriots who crossed the Delaware River in the bitter cold of winter only to die at the Battle of Trenton. We salute the patriots who rushed the beaches of Normandy knowing the carnage that awaited. We should not forget the patriots who died fighting their way out of the Chosin Reservoir rather than surrender. Nor should the patriots in position as peacekeepers and military support who died in the Beirut barracks terrorist bombing be forgotten.
The Indianapolis 500, boating at the lake, hot dogs, and the kickoff to summertime.
These are the freedoms and the fun we enjoy thanks to the quiet patriots, not the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.
In symbolic ways, we are the beneficiaries of the quiet patriot’s life insurance policy. Our payout has come in the form of immeasurable freedom. Memorial Day is a sober responsibility to acknowledge this fact.
The other 364 days matter even more. For on these days, it is imperative we be worthy citizens who, as Lincoln wrote, “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thoughtprovoking commentaryappearsoccasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
