You're listening to the Bill Bennett Show.

Folks, this is one of my favorite speeches.

I think it appropriate for Memorial Day.

This is Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The great jurist, Supreme Court

justice for many years. People like to talk about his lifespan touching most of

American history. God as a child he observed breakfast with old men from the Revolutionary War and as an

adult after he left the court he was an informal advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Think of that

span of American history from the Revolutionary War to FDR. That's quite amazing

isn't it? Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

So he was a captain in the Union Army, the Civil War,

and this is a speech he delivered.

I'll excerpt it.

Before Sedgwick, post number four,

Grand Army of the Republic.

Not long ago, I heard a young man ask

why people still kept up Memorial Day.

By the way, this is 1884, 140 years ago, almost exactly, May 30.

Not long ago, I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it

set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other,

not the expression of those feelings that so long as you live

will make this stay sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth.

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