Sheriff Wayne Ivey, Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Honors Those Who Paid the Ultimate Sacrifice This Memorial Day

message from Sheriff Wayne Ivey

ABOVE VIDEO: The Memorial Day Program – LIVE from J.S. Stone Memorial Cemetery, in Melbourne, FL. The Friday Night Locker Room’s Orville Susong and Steve Wilson bring you this very special tribute to honor and remember those that paid the ultimate price for our freedom.

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – If you woke up yesterday morning, free to go to the church of your choosing, you owe that freedom to those who sacrificed everything in the service and protection of our great nation to ensure our freedoms.

If you woke up yesterday morning free to worship or not worship if you so chose, then you also owe that freedom to those same brave men and women who gave all they had for our great nation and for generations of our citizens to come.

If you went on social media yesterday or this morning and voiced your thoughts or any opinion at all for that matter, you owe that freedom to our brave military heroes as well.

In fact, if you woke up this morning with the absolute freedom that is afforded to those who live in the United States, then you should be thankful for the brave and courageous souls who put everything on the line as members of the United States Military.

Those brave souls, who left it all on the battlefield to protect their family, their community, and their country, those brave souls who became prisoners of war and suffered immensely at the hands of their captors, and those brave souls who are still missing in action, leaving behind a family that never got closure in their loved one’s life.

They gave us our freedom and safety and we owe them our respect, our prayers, and our appreciation.

While Memorial Day is the day of the year that we pause to honor our fallen military heroes who lost their lives in the protection of our country, it is the other 364 days of the year that we owe to them as well.

Throughout the year we should never forget what they gave to keep us free and we need to tell their heroic stories to our next generation so that they can tell it to future generations.

When you hear someone say “they gave it all” what it really means is that they gave their life for you and your family to live in a free society like no other in the world.

It means they gave up their opportunity to grow old with their spouse, to watch their children graduate high school and college, to enjoy Christmas each year with their family, to help their parents as they age and need their children by their side, to love, to play, and to live their life to the fullest, so that you and yours can do just that…live your life to the fullest in the greatest nation on the planet.

Simply put, “they gave it all” means they believed in the United States of America enough to be willing to give their life, so that others were safe and free to enjoy something worth dying for.

That’s right, they believed in our great nation so much that they felt it worthy of giving their life to protect the very notion of freedom that we all too often take for granted.

So while Memorial Day is the day we honor our fallen, to me we should take a pause each and every day of our lives to thank them, to thank their families, and to recognize and honor those who currently serve our great nation, who could at any moment be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice as members of our Armed Forces.

I think to truly honor them we must strive to be better Americans and to put our differences aside to recognize and honor those who fought side by side to give us the freedoms we enjoy.

The freedom to be individuals, to be opinionated, to worship who and if we choose, to be successful and more than anything else, to live our lives as we choose!! I think we owe it to them “to be worth dying for” and to show everyone that the United States of America is the greatest place on earth to call home.

God Bless The United States of America and We Shall Never Forget Our Fallen Heroes!

– Sheriff Wayne Ivey

CLICK HERE FOR BREVARD COUNTY NEWS

Similar Stories