Submitted by Corey Roberts
(May 27, 2025) — Editor’s Note: The following is a speech delivered by Olivia Roberts of Haddam as part of the town’s Memorial Day ceremony on May 26, 2025. She is a student at Haddam-Killingworth Middle School where, each year, the eighth graders are asked to submit essays about Memorial Day. Olivia’s was chosen to be read.
Inspired by Madeleine L’Engle’s words: “Stories are the way we remember. We encode our memories in them and through them. We keep our past alive and pass our legacy on.”
In every flag that quietly waves, in every beginning, there lives a tale of sacrifice. That time marches on endlessly. Not told in parades, or engraved in stone, but whispered in the hearts of those who truly know this day. Shown as a mother speaks her son’s brave name, as a father holds his breath, as a brother who clutches timeworn letters aching for what is left. Carry stories, raw and real, of laughter, fear, and grace. Of battles fought far from home, to another place where they could be gone never heard from again.
It’s not just uniforms and ranks, or medals shining with satisfaction, it’s memories in photo
frames. Expresses that time can’t be pushed aside. Its footsteps are heard in creaking floors. Long after they are gone, we keep them close through stories told at tables year by year, of who they were, what made them full of joy, and what drew them to serve here. And in these tales, they breathe again, their legacies passed on, not just as soldiers, but as souls, alive again. As sons, as friends, as a new beginning.
So Memorial Day is not just grief, or flags at half-mast, it’s living out the love they gave, in the lives we build and own. Their courage strung together, their voices in our song, their stories resting on our hearts, they have lived all along. Because to honor them is this: to speak their names aloud, to write their lives in memory’s ink, and stand free and proud. As they have given up their lives for each generation to come.
Each fallen hero left a tale never-ending, left passing through each generation,
and telling it becomes our way of holding on to what is true. Never letting them drift too far from home. So let us tell their stories well, mingled with tears and remembrance, for when their story is told, they live on in our heart, our soul, and minds.
