Reminder: freedom comes at great cost
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SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — President Boyd K. Packer remembers, as a youngster growing up in Utah's Box Elder County, living near an injured World War I veteran.
The Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve was born six years after the armistice of the first world war and saw his childhood neighbor outside only on rare occasions when the weather was pleasant. The veteran had been gassed in battle. The war had continued to exact a cost on his health years later.
"He bore the burden that had come to him because of his patriotism," President Packer said during the May 4 dedication service of a veterans' memorial monument here that honors those who have borne such burdens and sacrifices.
The monument on the east side of the South Jordan Memorial Park cemetery depicts two life-sized soldiers, one standing guard and the second in an attitude of prayer offering a shoulder of support for his dutiful comrade. Included in the monument, which was created by sculptor L'Deane Trueblood, are the names of more than 200 local veterans who served in American wars and conflicts. A star is placed by the names of men who died in military service. The memorial was sponsored by the South Jordan Historical Committee. A number of veterans in uniform attended the dedicatory ceremony.
"It's a marvelous thing to raise this monument to these men," President Packer said.
In his dedicatory prayer, he referred to the monument as "a place of patriotism, spirituality and reverence for all those that have paid that sacrifice."
President Packer is a military veteran himself, having piloted bombers during World War II. In his comments, he said he remembers the names of comrades and friends who did not return from war. He recalled walking through a cemetery in southern Belgium where the remains of some 10,000 American soldiers are buried and through similar resting sites in the Philippines. He repeated the last words of an 18-year-old boy who suffered a mortal wound fighting in the American Revolutionary War: "Tell my mother I love her and tell her whom I love more than my mother I'm not sorry I turned out."
"That [quote] represents something of the spirit that has been typical in America," President Packer said.
He spoke of the many LDS pioneers who formed the Mormon Battalion and left the trek west to fight when duty called.
"It's part of the pattern built into us — this responsibility to be subject to kings and rulers and magistrates and to honor and obey and sustain the law," he said. That pattern remains, he added, as evidenced by the resurgence of patriotism in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
"Deep in the heart of everyone is that responsibility and that willingness to go and to act even with the possibility that we will lose our life."
President Packer said he was not sorry he "turned out on call" for duty and that he would not refuse military duty if summoned again, then added with a glimmer of levity, "I think I'm a little beyond that age now."
In his dedicatory prayer, President Packer invoked a blessing on all who viewed the new monument, asking that the children visiting the site "will be reminded that the freedom we have has come at great cost."
E-mail: jswensen@desnews.com
