Jen and David Boyle's wedding in New Ulm on Saturday was simple, elegant and moving, underscored by the two soldiers' understated remembrance of late family members and their "fallen fellow soldiers" in the program.
For their Gospel reading, the couple chose John 15: 12-16 a passage approved for Catholic weddings, though one verse also gains a special resonance on Memorial Day weekend:
13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
Since Saturday afternoon, that line has stuck in our mind. And today is Memorial Day, a moveable day of remembrance made even more poignant today by being the third anniversary of Chief Warrant Officer Matt Lourey's helicopter being shot down in Iraq.
We count his mother, former State Senator Becky Lourey, among our friends, and so we joined the hundreds of Minnesotans at his memorial service in early June 2005. It was heartbreaking, especially watching his widow, herself an Army captain, struggle for self-control as she spoke of the blessings Matt had brought to her life and to those around him.
His mother told the Washington Post:
"Just because we opposed the war doesn't mean Matthew died in vain," Becky Lourey said. "Ever since he died, we've come to find out how many lives he saved, how many people he taught. He flew cover for Iraqis when they went to vote."
No greater love. While she was still our student, Jen, a sergeant in the Minnesota National Guard, missed class when she was assigned to transfer the remains of Minnesota soldiers who had been killed in Iraq. Both her then-fiance (now her beloved husband) and her brother were deployed at the time, so the duty was solemn indeed for her.
For many Americans, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are abstract policy questions. For many rural Minnesotans, our traditions of service and reputations as warriors make the sacrifice deeply personal. There's a fine illustration of this in an audio slide show on the Star Tribune's website: No Greater Love.
Here is a list of Minnesotans (and those with close ties to the state) who have died in Iraq, and another at WCCO. The Washington Post maintains a catalogue of the Faces of the Fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here at the VA's web site is a list of the numbers of Americans who died in wars from the American Revolution through Desert Storm.
Quite literally, we can never thank them, but we can remember their sacrifice and thank their survivors. One way is to keep a moment of silence at 3 p.m. today.
Finally, we found a YouTube of photographs documenting the families' sacrifice, with commentary from the AP photographers who covered the funerals.
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