Speech: Comments for the Taylor-Wilson Lincoln Birthday Dinner at Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA 24502

 

Brother Mark R. Day Junior Vice Commander in Chief, SUVCW                                            

Comments for the Taylor-Wilson Lincoln Birthday Dinner at Lynchburg College,   2-13-2016

First of all the CinC, Eugene Mortorff, has asked that I extend his greetings to the Brothers of the Taylor-Wilson Camp 10 and the ladies of the Taylor-Wilson Auxiliary.  Gene regrets his inability to be here with us this evening and hopes that everyone enjoys the meal and the entertainment.  

We are here tonight celebrating the birth of President  Lincoln 207 years ago.   Yesterday is was my privilege to join with Brother Mortorff, Brother Martin, Sister Martin, and dozens of other members of the SUVCW and the Military Order of the Loyal Legion in attending the National Celebration of Lincoln's birth held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.  This was my first time attending the event and as I sat only a few yards from the massive statue of President Lincoln I felt, that his eyes were fixed upon me.  I was drawn to return the gaze and soon understood, that  the Presidents face seemed fixed with a purpose.   I don't know if that fixed expression was the message intended by the sculptor, but it was the message sent to me and I could not take my eyes off his face.

As the ceremony proceeded there came a point when a group of students began to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic  and as I listened I closed my eyes, but Lincoln's face remained.  The people in the Memorial were silent as the singers voices resonated from the Marble walls, which bear Lincoln's own immortal words, to a people locked in the struggle of Civil War, and while the words of the song were familiar, in my mind it was as if I was hearing them for the first time, and I felt a sudden rush of emotions. 

I understood that the task, which Lincoln wanted to accomplish, remains unfinished.  I wondered if that resolute face on the statue was remembering the voice of Marian Anderson singing beneath it on the steps of the Memorial after she was denied the right to perform in the Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  I wondered if the face of Lincoln had felt the pain of a people when Martin Luther King spoke of his dreams in 1963 and I wondered if the wind had carried the tensions of our recent experiences to brush against his beard.

I will leave you with a quote from a speech given on another cold and blustery day and a reminder:

 "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

We must Remember that, Abraham Lincoln nobly advanced the cause of Freedom, that he is among those honored dead who gave the last full measure, and that we need to take increased devotion to the cause of freedom,  so that he did not die in vain.