Rain Changes Venue – But Hearts Remember
Mahaska County native Lt. Colonel Herbert Strasser (Ret) delivers the keynote speech at Monday’s Memorial Day service.
Oskaloosa, Iowa -The weather may have changed the plans and location for Monday’s annual Memorial Day service, but for those in attendance, the emotion and gratefulness for those who served in defense of the United States was unchanged.
Mahaska County native Lt. Colonel Herbert Strasser (Ret.) grew up on a farm north of Rose Hill, graduating from Oskaloosa High School in 1967, marrying his high school sweetheart, Margaret Jackson, in 1969.
Strasser then attended ISU where he joined ROTC while obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture Education.
Strasser joined the U.S. Army as a Second Lieutenant in June 1971, serving 23 years. Strasser eared a Bronze Star in Desert Storm while serving with the 101st Airborne Division.
Retiring from the army in 1994 at the rank of Lt. Colonel, while he was serving as professor of military science at Iowa State University, he then furthered his education by obtaining his PhD in Educational Leadership.
Strasser addressed those gathered on Monday by saying, “This country has the honor of the military that has always responded to the civilian authority, and take great pride in that.”
“As we remember here today, Decoration Day, which is what I grew up with… it didn’t actually become Memorial Day until 1971 when we finally got a national bill passed,” Strasser said. That bill set up the last Monday in May as Memorial Day.
Choosing to look into the Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln, Strasser said, “150 years ago, this year, Abraham Lincoln gave one of the most poignant speeches of all time, the Gettysburg Address.”
” Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
“He was criticized for that speech, it was too short”, Strasser says, explaining that he made the speech during a day filled will speeches by other public speakers. “There was a speaking contest that was memorializing that cemetery. It went on for eight hours, and President Lincoln’s lasted 2 1/2 minutes. And yet his is the one we remember. It is the one I say that says the most about honoring our dead.”
Strasser says that the speech was political in nature, but was made to “try and unify the country. He was making an argument about why we should be a unified country. Everything he did had a purpose.”
“Today we face different threats to our way of life than those Civil War ancestors. We face dictators who threaten us with nuclear warfare. Terrorists who would use any means possible to destroy us and friends who would like to buy us because they can’t beat us in combat.”
“The world will little note nor long remember what I’m saying here today, but it can never forget what they did. Is for us the living, to be dedicated here, the unfinished work for which they have fought.”
