LBB's post about Purple Heart recipients got me thinking
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Jan 9, 2023, 10:28 AM
about two very special Memorials I have seen, one on the largest scale, and the other on a much smaller, more intimate scale.
I saw the "Wall That Heals" several years ago. This is, of course, the scaled down traveling Viet Nam War Memorial. Even in scaled down, traveling version, the long black wall, with its almost endless list of names of young men whose life was snuffed out in that conflict embued the area with a sense of awe, honor and loss. You could feel the ghosts in residence as people searched for names of acquaintances or loved ones. I saw some very hard looking men reduced to tears that day. Very few words were spoken, or needed to be spoken.
The second, much smaller scale memorial is Clemson's Scroll of Honor. I don't think Clemson could have chosen a more fitting spot for the Scroll, than adjacent to Memorial Stadium. A small mound of rocks, next to a grand edifice. Somehow symbolic of how the ultimate sacrifice of those Clemson heroes fits into the larger sacrifice of all those from everywhere who have served and given the greatest gift possible to give for freedom.
Walking around the Scroll of Honor, reading the names and the years, the ghosts are in residence there, as well. What would those young people have become, if their lives had not been cut short by the horrors of war? We will never know. But, it is thanks to them, and all those like them from every walk of life, that we have the freedom to assemble on fall afternoons, in college football temples such as Death Valley, and cheer on a sport that is uniquely American, and uniquely beloved by Americans. Never take that freedom for granted. It was earned in fatal bloodshed by those whose names are inscribed on memorials, and engraved on tombstones around the world.