By Hipolito Navarrete, Managing Editor/Publisher

Memorial Day is about those that died; it is about remembering their sacrifice for the values that this country was built upon. They are the people that stood their ground and fell while in uniform. But it is also about the living veterans, so that we honor the promise made those all in uniform; it is about those that paid the prize for a belief that there is something greater than them and how we take care about those that lived. Those that survived spend their memorial weekend thinking about them, about the families they never had or they left behind. If they knew them, they tend to remember them at the best of times and at their best moment because they know that the situation could be vastly different.

As we visit friends and enjoy a pic nic, don’t forget that there are real powers that would prefer we do not have the freedoms we enjoy and that those freedoms are easily ignored because they are only feasible when we respect each other’s choices. The 2017 landscape is vastly different than it was last year. Those that would be remembered because of their sacrifice would also want us to remember what they fought for. There are many that died because of their loyalty to their comrades in arms, they were not thinking about us getting the great American burger or going to that gathering with our friends and make up stories that would rival Hollywood fantasies, they fought because they imagined themselves doing that, and now they won’t because they are dead.

What we say and what we do are so vastly different in many ways, we discuss the honor and patriotism of our armed forces, but we find ways to diminish their care and not pay for the work they were asked to do. There are around 50,000 homeless veterans every night we must honor those that died, by keeping the promise to all that live.

Enjoy your pic nic and your beer and remember: “In all the American wars there have been 651,008 Battle Deaths; and about 1.2million deaths during service in war time. About 42 million people have served in the military during wartime. About 1/50th of the people serving during a time of war have died.“