2024 Memorial Day remarks
I was recently asked to serve as the guest speaker for a Memorial Day ceremony in the neighboring town of Oak Harbor, Washington. After some introductory thank yous, and acknowledging a few VIPs, I delivered the remarks below:
To begin my comments today, I’m going to ask each of you to recall a very memorable scene from a movie I think most here today are familiar with.
What I’d like you to envision is the site of an aging man standing in front of a white marble gravestone — one among a field of thousands. Quietly, the old man asks his wife if he’s led a good life…if he’s a good man.
Private Ryan played by Matt Damon — is visiting the resting place of Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, at the American Cemetery at Normandy. At the end of the mission to save Private Ryan, following the deaths of his three brothers, Captain Miller, with his last breath, demands Ryan live out his life in a manner worthy of the sacrifices made by the men sent to rescue him. Now, Ryan needed to know he’s achieved his final mission.
In a movie filled with gut wrenching scenes, it’s one of the hardest to watch, yet it’s one of the most instructive for anyone who has walked in the shadows and stood on the shoulders of those who have gone before.
Many of us here today, if asked could, with an unfortunate ease, name someone that was taken from us while in service to our nation, and it’s likely that for most of us this scene from Saving Private Ryan evokes some very familiar emotions. Today, I’d like to share with you the story of the person that serves that role for me. Today I want to tell you about a Marine named Captain Kelly Hinz. He’s the person I think of when I reflect upon my own life and ask if I’ve earned this, and if I’ve led a good life.
Kelly and I were student pilots together in Meridian Mississippi learning to fly jets back between 2000 and 2002.
But the thing about Kelly is that he was a very good student pilot, and he made it look easy. And for a middle of the bell curve guy like myself, I was actually kind of jealous. He never seemed as worried about things as the rest of us. Maybe he studied more. Maybe he was just better at masking his nervousness. Maybe he was just a natural. Regardless, Kelly was someone I looked up to and wanted to be more like.
Eventually, Kelly and I’d both earned our Wings of Gold — he a few months ahead of me. He went on to fly for the Marine Corps in Miramar, and I came to fly for the Navy here in Washington.
During the few years after he and I left flight school there were mishaps (how pilots antiseptically refer to crashes). We would get a phone call (texts were a few years away), an email, or hear hushed whispers in the ready room. We’d always ask, “who” and then usually feel a sense of relief followed by guilt; relief that it wasn’t one of our friends, but guilt because it meant it was someone else’s. My peers and I rode this emotional roller coaster time and again for a few years, then in the spring of 2005 as I was training for my turn at war, it happened.
Over lunch another young pilot casually asked if I’d heard about the mid-air collision between two F-18s over Iraq. I had not. I asked what else he knew, but it wasn’t much. The pilots had launched from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and then something about bad weather, and of course it was at night. I asked if he knew the squadron, and he told me it was the Death Rattlers of VMFA-323. A day or two went by, and honestly I didn’t give it much more thought, assuming it was, once again a glad I don’t know them, but sorry for those who do kind of thing. Then the San Diego Union Tribune ran an article titled, “Second Marine Pilot Killed in Crash Identified.” I had missed the release of the first pilot’s name, but I did not miss this one. Captain Kelly Hinz of Woodbury, Minnesota was dead.
Over the next several months I finished training for my first deployment, and I often wondered what it would be like: bad weather, at night, over violent terrorists, knowing the show wouldn’t be over until getting safely back aboard the ship. And… I wondered what happened to Kelly and his wingman. I wondered how something like that could happen to him. And if it happened to him, what kind of odds did the rest of us have?
This was the first time I could clearly put a face and a name to a mishap; and it happened to be the guy I revered and admired — a guy who represented the best of us.
But in the years since, there have been more. Too many more. Some much closer than others. Each evokes different reactions and feelings, and with each you learn a little more about yourself. Toward the end of my career, I chose to fly in a missing man fly-over because I couldn’t bring myself to sit and watch one of my best friends eulogize another who we’d just lost. Some died in spectacular crashes, some had their stories memorialized in cinema, and some lost their battles to enemies that haunted them long after they’d returned from war.
It never gets easier, it just becomes familiar. But still, there’s something significant about the first. The first one makes the abstract real, it shakes the it can’t happen to me out of you. The first one grabs you by the collar and gets your attention.
Interestingly, the first one also presents us with a dilemma. How will we respond, and how will we carry ourselves in the months and years to follow? How will we continue to serve, whether in uniform or out? How will we continue to lead our lives in a way that acknowledges the tragedy of loss, but also recognizes the beauty of a life well lived?
And now to bring this back to beginning, back to Private Ryan at the cemetery at Normandy — how will we continue to earn the sacrifice of those who gave their all? What do we do to continue earning the right to call ourselves their friends? What do we do to continue earning the privilege of telling their stories?
And here’s where my comments may disappoint: I don’t have one specific answer to these questions. In fact, in many cases, just asking the question is enough to give us the proper perspective. Sometimes, in our moments of solitude and reflection, just asking these hard questions is enough to remind ourselves of the importance of gratitude.
Gratitude for our opportunities to serve,
Gratitude for our opportunities to be part of something bigger than ourselves,
Gratitude for the privilege of having walked alongside men and women who paid the ultimate price to uphold the values and truths we hold to be self-evident.
For me, I’m going to keep trying to live my life in a manner that earns the right to continue telling Kelly’s story and honoring his sacrifice,
So, as I close today, I hope you’ll join me in doing the same for all those we honor not just today, but every other Memorial Day — and the countless days in between.
Thank you.
