Memorial Day — 28 May 1984
If it so happens the thing you want to do for a living is to become a writer and one day you acquire that title, you’re faced with a couple of problems. If you write humor, you will fail because humor is a matter of opinion, and when you write about serious matters, you must reach the heart of it all or you’re no writer at all.
And when it comes to a topic like the day we set aside to honor Americans who have died in wars, the writer has an even greater obligation. Not so much to those who died, or even to veterans still alive, but to American children playing and picnicking on this day in parks, playgrounds, and backyards. The ones who, as yet have no idea where they fit in terms of the world’s hopes and dreams, no sense that they are the young and untried “royalty” of freedom.
We can argue whether our war dead fought in the right or in the wrong wars for the right reasons, but that we are here to argue at all we owe to those whom we honor today.
So, if the obligation of the writer on this day is to speak for those who can no longer speak because they gave all there was to give to children they would never see, I would say for them, to those children, “Play.”
