AmVets Post 513
Montezuma, NY
Commander Arthur Thomas
Of
AmVets Post 513
Would like to welcome you to our site.
The local VFW has temporarily allowed us to be housed in their building. Due to limited funding, we have been having a difficult time raising money for our own building.
Donations for a new building are greatly appreciated and accepted.
You can mail donations to:
AmVets Post 513
PO BOX 513
Montezuma, NY
13117
Thank you for your support!
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The community is not just the past. Nor is it just the present, or even the future. The community is all of those. Look at the community and see it as a vast tapestry, so large that looking to the left and to the right you cannot see the beginning OR the end. The tapestry is made up OF INNUMERABLE THREADS. If you step up real close and look very carefully at that part of the tapestry right in front of you, why that is us right here today. Each one of us is a thread. By itself one thread doesn’t make much of a picture. But together, side by side, end to end, crossing back and forth, the threads make a very colorful picture. Every thread has a beginning and an end. There is nothing a thread can do to make itself longer or shorter than the weaver intended. Some threads are dull. Some threads are colorful.
Now step back a bit and see the tapestry as a whole picture. See those short, illuminating threads? See how they make the picture come alive? See how they give the other threads strength and hold them together and keep them from being broken? Those are soldiers.
Those are soldiers who grew up here, but they didn’t die here. They were young people who in a time of great danger to our way of life went far a field and placed themselves squarely in the path of those who would tear apart this tapestry. To them your freedom was worth more than their individual lives and that is why their thread is short. But it is oh so bright. It is bright because it burns with the truth that freedom isn’t free and that the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
We entertain the children with fairy tales about once upon a time when giants walked the earth. Giants were creatures larger than life, possessing super human strengths, able to overcome any obstacle. I say to you, let us also tell them that giants still walk this land. Yes, you can see them though you may not recognize them. I will tell you where to look for a giant from yesterday. Take your children and find the headstone of a young soldier. Teach them to value that soldier’s sacrifice, to be proud to be an American, and to thank god for giving us giants.
-- Thomas Galvin
Spoken at Pine Hill Cemetery
Throop, NY
May 28, 2006
Memorial Day
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