'We honor today who have paid the ultimate price for those Freedoms and Liberties' MONROE. Village of Monroe Mayor Neil S. Dwyer reflects on the importance of Memorial Day.

The following are the remarks Village of Monroe Mayor Neil S. Dwyer made on Memorial Day:
Good morning,
On behalf of the Board of Trustees and our residents in our Village, I thank you for your attendance and attention today as we are called to offer our respect and to honor those here and throughout the world who gave their last full measure of devotion.
President Lincoln, in addressing his troops at Gettysburg, spoke in what is considered to be the most prolific statement given in speaking of the republic and the core of its very existence.
I find it appropriate that today we reflect on those words.
"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.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. 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. "
Today, I can with clear intent and voice stand before you and recite the Gettysburg Address because of our soldier and their families, who without hesitation had accepted the call to duty to protect the very rights I and We have today.
I and We will and should forever be in their debt and I and We should never forget the sacrifice, the final full measure made by the American soldier on behalf of Freedom and Liberty.
As we reflect why we are here, let us ask that we commit ourselves to never forget our veterans, their families, and those that we honor today who have paid the ultimate price for those Freedoms and Liberties.
God bless our community, our nation, all veterans and their families.
Thank you.