Congressman Garamendi’s Statement on Memorial Day

WALNUT GROVE, CA – This Monday, Congressman Garamendi will be at two Memorial Day services to honor our nation’s fallen soldiers. He will speak at Sacramento Valley National Cemetery Memorial Day Service, which is located at 5810 Midway Road in Dixon, CA and begins at 9 AM. He will also speak at the Vacaville-Elmira Cemetery, which is at 522 Elmira Road, Vacaville, CA, during a service that begins at 11 AM.

The Congressman’s remarks, prepared for delivery, are below:

It is an honor to be here today. On Memorial Day, I always know that today, I’ll be surrounded by heroes. Looking at this crowd, I see service members and veterans from every recent war. I see military families, whose sons and daughters went into harm’s way because of their sense of Duty, Honor, and their love of Country. I see patriots, Americans who feel humbled and blessed to live in the greatest nation on Earth.

Memorial Day is always a day of mixed emotions. This is a solemn occasion to remember the heroes who never returned home. This is also a day we celebrate the achievements of the heroes among us, the people who served. This is a day we reflect on what it means to be a free people, and all the sacrifices and struggles it took to reach this point. As the son of a World War II Major, today is also a day for me to remember the work my father and millions of other Americans in the Greatest Generation did to secure our freedom.

Our younger generations have also sacrificed immensely and experienced the horrors of war. In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 6,700 brave men and women in the U.S. military have died. More than 50,000 have been wounded, many with serious disfigurements and brain injuries.

Hidden behind these statistics are 57,000 unique stories. Stories of unheralded courage, selfless devotion, sleepless nights, and terrifying days, but also stories of love lost and found, of hopes, dreams, family, community, friends. Men and women, human with all that entails, put in dangerous situations the rest of us can only imagine.

People like Captain Reid Nishizuka, who was assigned to the 427th Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale Air Force Base, and people like Staff Sergeant Richard Dickson, part of the 306th Intelligence Squadron at Beale. Both were killed in combat in Afghanistan this year, along with 242 of their fellow Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country over the past 12 months.

Let’s take a moment of silence to honor and remember our fallen heroes.

Those who have experienced war know that it should always be the last resort. We must never hastily commit our troops to combat, because they are, you are, America’s bravest sons and daughters, fathers and mothers.

The cost of war does not end when all our troops are brought home. The pain of war lingers for an entire generation. We owe our wounded warriors a debt we can never repay, yet it is a debt we must do our best to honor for the rest of our days. From providing service members with every tool they need to stay safe to funding the medical research needed for combat injuries to reducing the VA backlog, our work continues long after war ends.

As the Representative for a District with two Air Force Bases – Beale and Travis – every day I wake up, I have a tough act to follow. You can guarantee that someone at the bases woke up before me, and no matter how many times I tell myself, “Do something good for someone today, John,” I know someone at the bases did something better.

I am in awe of your service and your grace under fire. This Memorial Day, as our long war in Afghanistan is finally, slowly coming to a close, I promise to you that I will do everything in my power to make the transition as smooth as possible. We live in tough times, but they’ll never be tougher than the brave men and women who don America’s uniform with pride.

Thank you for having me here today. Thank you for your love of country.