I wish I could say the title is snark. It isn't.
From Gov. Beshear's own press release:
"Memorial Day allows us to honor and remember the military officers who have passed while in service for our country," said Gov. Beshear. "I urge all Kentuckians to take a moment on Monday between the parades and the grilling, and give thanks to the many men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our freedoms."
Only that's not the half of what Memorial Day actually is. Or ought to be.
It really is no wonder, if that's a valid view of Memorial Day now (and I dearly hope it's not), just why Veteran's Day has increasingly become about dead veterans instead of the living.
If Memorial Day is officers' only now, what about all of the service members throughout history who died in war but never received an officer's commission? Just how many dead at Pearl Harbor were just ordinary sailors, there for a standard tour of enlisted duty and no more? How many of the American dead at D-Day were just drafted privates who would never have the chance to gain higher rank no matter what their potential? How many of the dead in Vietnam were just teenagers who didn't have the grades to go to college?
Just how many of those listed in IGTNT diaries here were just regular enlisted soldiers? How many were just everyday people who had signed up for the National Guard or Reserves just in case their country needed them someday, and didn't particularly even want to be on a track to potentially be an officer?
And what about the veterans, enlisted and commissioned, who died because of their service but not during it? What about someone who's injured enough in Iraq or Afghanistan to get a disability discharge but doesn't heal enough to survive five years, something that given current medical technology may be more likely now than it was in the past? What about the thousands of veterans made ill by Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam? What about my two Kentucky born and raised great-uncles who both died of cancers caused by their service in Vietnam (one of whom Beshear would recognize as a deceased officer worthy of recognition... if he'd been killed there instead of poisoned).
What about all the soldiers who've given their lives to their country in ways other than dying on the field of battle? What about the soldiers who are never the same again?
What about those who return home to find the dreams they had of their futures are now unreachable?
And beyond that, what about those who serve in the military, come home after their enlistment time is over, and continue to serve their country for the rest of their lives - just not with guns?
My grandfather was drafted in WWII. He never saw a battlefield - he was one of the countless soldiers sent to places just in case the fighting fronts moved places they never did. According to the draft laws of the time, he should have never been in uniform. He never forgot that, and in his adult life he spent time on the draft board making sure that young men who by law shouldn't be sent, weren't. He was also involved in the American Legion, and until the month he died he was the one who folded the flags at military funerals because he was the local expert at it.
His memorial flag sits in its wood and glass case, stars tilting downward, because no one else in that American Legion post had had to fold a flag more than a handful of times a year for decades. My heart nearly bursts with pride every time I see it, because I know just what the crookedness of that flag's folds means in terms of families comforted and lives commemorated over so many years, even after his sight was so far gone he was folding by feeling instead of looking.
I'll remember his service - all of it - tomorrow, and stick flowers and a flag at his grave while my widowed grandmother watches.
And I'll try to forget that the governor of the state he lived in - the state he was drafted in, the state he's buried in - wouldn't be bothering to include his life in the commemorations tomorrow even if he had been sent to an active front and killed so long ago, even if my mother and I had never been born, even if my grandmother had lost the love of her life before they were wed after the war.
Because, you see, my grandfather's military-provided headstone doesn't say GEN or LT or COL or SGT.
It says PVT.
And apparently to Gov. Beshear, that means his military service wasn't even worth a little Memorial Day lip service.