Remember True Reason We Celebrate Memorial Day

This weekend, we celebrate the Memorial Day holiday. For many, Memorial Day
signifies the start of summer. People will be visiting family, barbecuing,
enjoying sports and other things. For most workers, this is a three day
weekend.

As you celebrate this weekend, please take a little time and remember the
true reason we celebrate Memorial Day. It is to honor those men and women
who have fought and died to protect the freedoms we all cherish here in the
United States of America. To those who have fought for our country and
given the ultimate sacrifice, I say thank you to them and to their families.
There are times when our fighting men and women go to war. No matter how
you feel about the current conflicts we are involved in, or, how you have
felt about past wars, those who fought and died for our country deserve
nothing but our utmost respect and honor.

I will be going to a local Memorial Day parade tomorrow morning. My
favorite part of this parade is when the rifle squad from the American
Legion marches by. On this Memorial Day, may god continue to bless the
greatest country in the world, the United States of America.

Bizarre News Day

Talk about a bizarre news day in my area yesterday. First, we find out the
Executive
Director of our commuter rail service took his own life by, of all things,
walking in front of a commuter train. He was probably about to be fired due
to financial improprieties. It is reported that he got an unauthorized,
$56,000 bonus. Now that is bad, but is it worth taking your life over?
There had to be other things going on.

Then not more than a half hour later, we hear of a shooting at the Old Navy
store in Downtown Chicago. Seems that a woman who works there had broken up
with someone, but that someone didn't think the relationship should have
been over.

The Commuter Rail Executive Director one hit me a little hard. I had the
opportunity to work with this person. While I didn't know what was going on
in his financial dealings at the agency, he was always good to work with in
my role on the commuter rail system's Accessibility Committee. I especially
liked that he, the Executive Director was at every committee meeting, that
he said it like it is and when some of the people with disabilities got out
of hand, he put them in their place. It's too bad that he, apparently, did
things improperly from a financial sense, and it's too bad he took his life.

As far as the Old Navy deal, all I have to say is there are far better ways
to deal with a broken heart. At least, that guy is out of the gene pool;
too bad he took someone with him.