Holiday season is good. We Owls don’t worry about getting and spending, we only enjoy. Sharing and listening is the spirit we like to savor. We leave greenback-hurling loons to spend themselves into debt on Black Friday.

Limestone held numerous pleasurable parades, happily hiking through rain and wind with music playing and hands waving. Our own NASA workers, explorers to the universe, even marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The same spirit of neighborliness and gratitude was everywhere. The ‘dress ‘em up’ parades in Ardmore and Athens, company luncheons at local restaurants, and outreach Thanksgiving dinners for out-of-luck neighbors were a joy to behold. We remembered veterans, cheered football teams, and shouted out for local charities, celebrations and good times.

Here’s one commemoration event we can all be proud of. Johnson Elementary School has a new principal, Matt Taylor. He’s come up with a brainstorm which will last forever with his students, and now you. Ten years back he thought his kids should experience a little about why American is the way it is. He set aside time to take grade school delegations to see and learn about the great monuments in Washington, DC. This year, something special happened. He said whoever among fifth- and sixth-graders could write the nicest letter about why they should solemnly place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, would get to do so. The results were astounding.

Maggie Burgess, 5th Grade at Johnson wrote, “The ‘Tomb of the Unknown Soldier’ is four soldiers that passed while serving our country. It is called the tomb of the unknown soldier because the soldiers were injured so badly that nobody knew who they were. They also represent the other soldiers who are missing.

It would be an honor for me to hang a wreath on the unknown soldier’s tomb. It’s important to me because the soldiers sacrificed their lives for us to have freedom. It’s an honor because they served for us and everyone else in America … It’s also very special to me. I believe their families would probably be very happy if they knew that someone that didn’t even know them was still honoring them.

It would also be an honor to my family to hang the wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier. My great uncle passed away serving in the Army during Vietnam. Also my grandfather and aunt served in the Marines. I would like to honor everybody that has served and is currently serving in the military and them.”

In her own simple, true words, Maggie showed what it means to appreciate sacrifice. She and three other wreath layers, Chance Lewter, 5th grade at Sugar Creek, Austin Parker and Camdyn Prater, both 6th graders at Ardmore, represented what is finest in American education. Their teachers cared to explain why sacrifice is necessary for freedom, and they got it. Their parents and their family story helped them become the sensitive, aware persons they are. They displayed their understanding at a solemn ceremony.

Maggie and her friends join another great man who wrote of sacrifice. This letter was sent to a mother who offered up five sons to the cause of Union and freedom for our United States.

Executive Mansion,

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.