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While many Utahns will join other Americans in a variety of recreational activities this Memorial Day, our individual and collective thoughts should not drift too far from what this annual holiday is intended to be.
Our nation, after all, is still at war. Soldiers from every state and many communities are actively fighting battles in distant lands. As happens with war, casualties occur. Lives are lost and many others sustain life altering injuries.
It is especially sobering to consider that in the year since last Memorial Day, more than 530 American soldiers have died - some 200 of them in Iraq and more than 320 in Afghanistan, where deadly engagements seem to be intensifying. At least two of the dead were Utahns.
It was 141 years ago that General John Logan first proclaimed a day to memorialize the tens of thousands of soldiers who died during the Civil War. As the General's order read, "Let us . . . gather around their sacred remains" and "renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us - the soldier's widow and orphan."
In KSL's view, it is an act and a pledge worth renewing each Memorial Day. We can never be too grateful for those most directly affected by the devastation of war.
