By Justin Roy
Veterans Day calls us to remember and honor our veterans' legacy by serving one another and working together. When Congress made Armistice Day a national holiday, it was proclaimed as a day dedicated to world peace. Congress reaffirmed that sentiment 16 years later, when it renamed the holiday Veterans Day. Today, we can carry that purpose forward by working together across differences to build an America that honors their service.
Finding examples of Americans from all walks of life coming together can be challenging. However, those who served and are currently serving do that every day. They come from every corner of this country and work together for a greater cause. Together they endure hardships, suffer losses, and serve the nation.
Typically, we connect military service with duty to country and protecting our neighbors.
Americans hold their service members in high esteem, and a large proportion of Americans trust veterans as leaders. For many, their service to our communities continues after leaving the military, as they bring their experience to the work of helping neighbors and addressing shared challenges.
The theme of service is woven deeply into Veterans Day, and it is a legacy that applies to all Americans. When President Calvin Coolidge dedicated the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Mo. on Armistice Day, 1926, he said it stood for “service, and all that service implies.” He spoke of reverence for the dead, respect for the living, loyalty to country, and devotion to humanity.
Calvin Coolidge speaks at the Liberty Memorial in 1926. Credit: National WWI Museum and Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri, USA.
What Coolidge was describing, and what many before and since have echoed, is that we have responsibilities to one another as citizens and people. It’s a spirit of service that calls us to thank veterans, tend to their needs, and look out for our neighbors. Honoring veterans begins with listening to their experiences and supporting them in the communities we share.
The same goes for the rest of our community. Serving one another requires us to look past our differences and see the person underneath. Some will say this is an impossible task. They say our differences and polarization are too difficult to overcome. But military service offers examples of people with different backgrounds and beliefs taking responsibility for one another.
In 1921, when President Warren Harding spoke at the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, he reflected that: “He may have been a native or an adopted son; that matters little, because they glorified the same loyalty, they sacrificed alike.” In Harding’s mind, it did not matter if he was native-born or an immigrant, rich or poor. He served and sacrificed alike. Likewise, our veterans protected the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman next to them, regardless of who they were.
If we can ask others to do so in the most dire and terrible of situations, how can we not ask it of ourselves?
As President Barack Obama said of America’s armed forces in his 2012 State of the Union, "They're not consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example." In our own communities, it can start simply. We can break bread with someone whose views differ from ours. We can volunteer alongside a neighbor we do not yet know. We can support a local veterans’ organization and ask what help is needed.
On Veterans Day, honoring those who served and the virtues of that service does not conflict with the desire for a peaceful and better world. It never has; the day was dedicated to peace both as Armistice Day and Veterans Day. As Eisenhower said in his 1954 Veterans Day proclamation, “... let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain."
So let us take up the task at hand. Today, we celebrate and remember those who served.
Let us build upon their service and sacrifice by serving one another, supporting veterans in our community, and working across differences to build peace with our neighbors. Let us honor our responsibilities to one another.
