U.S. soldiers did not die in vain
Memorial Day speaker focuses on freedom, sacrifice
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Tesia Galvan
Father Ed Farmer of St. Alban's Episcopal Church (right) in Worland welcomes main speaker Commander David Magruder, Chaplain, US Navy Reserves, to the American Legion Floyd Minch Post 44 Memorial Day ceremonies where the the nation's war dead were honored.
WORLAND – It was a sunny, breezy Monday morning, a day suitable to honor the men and women who served our nation.
The Memorial Day ceremonies, by American Legion Floyd Linch Post 44, at Riverview Cemetery were filled as guest speaker Navy Chaplain, Commander David B. Magruder spoke a message of freedom, sacrifices and thoughtfulness to all those lost while serving our country.
Magruder opened with the recitement of the last paragraph of Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, and reminded attendees that it is the duty of the living to remember "these deal shall not have died in vain."
"Memorial Day provides us the opportunity to gather in remembrance of the honored war dead from our own generations," Magruder said as he shared remembrance of two young men, United States Marine Corps. Veterans Moises Langhorst, 19, and Levi Angle, 20.
Magruder said Langhorst and Angle died one day apart on the streets of Iraq in April 2004, and he remembers these boys not because he knew them from church, but because he was present when their families learned they passed.
"It was my solemn duty to accompany Marine Master Sargent and Staff Sargent to the home of these young men as they informed two devastated families of the terrible news that their sons, the boys they nursed, changed, taught to play ball, fish and hunt, were dead," Magruder said.
"They did not die in vain ... these men gave the full measure of devotion in a cause that many question, and some still to this day as our wars continue," he added.
"Those young men died for a cause they considered more important than their own life ... They did not volunteer to die. They volunteered to defend values for which men and women have always been willing to die if need be, the values of freedom that we receive each day as a gift bought with a tremendous price," he said.
"The boys I remember today, Moises Langhorst and Levi Angle, fought to defend the greater ideals Abraham Lincoln drew upon in his Gettysburg Address, that all men are created equal. That freedom of conscious means freedom of religion and that toleration for those who do not share your faith is right and proper.
"They died for the ideal that there are freedoms worth sacrificing your own life to defend," Magruder said.
Magruder closed his speech by saying, "As we honor the memory of all our war dead, let us pledge that their lives, their scarifies and their bravery shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to our nation."
