Dear Flight Attendants, This weekend we remember all of those selfless and brave Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice of themselves so we may have the freedoms we enjoy every day. The freedom to realize our dreams and to speak our minds. Please take a break this weekend from all things personal and controversial to remember not only those who gave their sacrifice, but their loved-ones who bear the emotional scars that will never heal. Abraham Lincoln perfectly captured what remembrance of our fallen and wounded means to the survival of our nation. While wars and sacrifice have continued since 1863, our debt of gratitude to our fallen, injured, and serving heroes has only grown – but it also teeters on edge of obscurity; drowned out but social media and selfishness. I am reprinting Lincolns Gettysburg Address here as a reminder of the genesis of, and the sacrifice required, to safeguard the freedoms we and our loved-ones enjoy every day – for freedom is not free. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863 In Unity and Service, Marcus N. Valentino President, CAL AFA
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 16:45:04 +0000
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