Download & Print
May 29, 2023
Freedom’s Garden
By Christopher Dion
Chaplain, Bandera American Legion Post 157
In fields once worked by slaves, now lie the first fruits of freedom. The very best of America's sons and daughters laid in rows as a sacrifice to freedom. Each one, like a seedling, sprouts a stone flower that bears the warriors name and the battle that he fought.
Here they lie in ground that both divided a country and brought it back again. Here they are no longer slave or free, no longer immigrant or citizen, no longer a color or a creed. Here they are all heroes. Here they are proof of the success of the experiment that is America. Here they are the memory of a nation and a lesson of the price of oppression here and abroad.
Listen as they beckon you to walk in their fields. Place your hands on their stone petals and speak their names again once more.
Commit with me, and others of our like, to never let be forgotten, the price of freedoms field. Let none defile the flag they served or disrespect their nations song. No teach your children and teach them well what the mighty, have before us done. Teach them true, in Kennedys word, to ask not for themselves, but rise and serve and serve again, as serve us well they did.
Here they lie in ground that both divided a country and brought it back again. Here they are no longer slave or free, no longer immigrant or citizen, no longer a color or a creed. Here they are all heroes. Here they are proof of the success of the experiment that is America. Here they are the memory of a nation and a lesson of the price of oppression here and abroad.
Listen as they beckon you to walk in their fields. Place your hands on their stone petals and speak their names again once more.
Commit with me, and others of our like, to never let be forgotten, the price of freedoms field. Let none defile the flag they served or disrespect their nations song. No teach your children and teach them well what the mighty, have before us done. Teach them true, in Kennedys word, to ask not for themselves, but rise and serve and serve again, as serve us well they did.