Sheriff Wayne Ivey Honors Fallen Heroes in Memorial Day Message to Brevard County

Message from Sheriff Wayne Ivey

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – If you woke up this morning in the United States of America, you owe the blanket of freedom you slept under last night, to those brave and courageous souls who “gave it all” in the protection of their country.

In fact, as Americans, we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for the many freedoms we enjoy to those who gave their lives protecting our way of life.

We owe this debt of gratitude to those who left it all on the battlefield to protect their family, their community, and their country!! We owe it to those who became prisoners of war, suffering immensely at the hands of their captors, and to those who are still missing in action, leaving behind a family who never got closure in their loved one’s life.

These heroes gave their lives and in return gave us our freedom and safety!! We owe them our respect, our prayers, our admiration, our freedom, and our lives, as we know them.

Memorial Day is the one day of the year that we pause to honor our fallen military heroes who “gave it all” in the protection of our country, but it is the other 364 days of freedom each year that we owe to them as well!! While today is recognized as their day, throughout the year we should never forget what they gave, what they and their families sacrificed, and why they did it.

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, it means they believed in the United States of America and what it stands for so much that they were willing to give their life, so that others were safe and free.

That’s right, they believed in our great nation so much that they felt it was worthy of giving their life to protect it.

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 these 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, actually, I know 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

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