At Orient Lodge No. 683 F.&A.M.’s

November Stated meeting, Sam Harper,

P.M., honored Veterans by reciting this

Benediction by Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn:

Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor . . . together. Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews . . . together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination, no prejudice, no hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy.

2009: Sam Harper, USMC, P.M. 683

Any man among us, the living, who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who he here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery . . .

To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars.. . . When the last shot has been fired there will still be those whose eyes are turned backward, not forward, who will be satisfied with those wide extremes of poverty and •wealth in which the seeds of another war can breed. We promise you, our departed comrades: this, too, we will not permit. This war has been fought by the common man; its fruits of peace must be enjoyed by the common man! We promise, by all that is sacred and holy, that your sons — the sons of miners and millers, the sons of farmers and workers — will inherit from your death the right to a living that is decent and secure. . . .

We promise that, when once again men seek profit at your expense, we will remember how you looked when we placed you reverently, lovingly in the ground.

Thus do we memorialize those who, having ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: this shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come — we promise — the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.

Amen.

Note: This benediction, delivered February 19, .1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, was taken from Rabbi Gittelsohn's sermon delivered on Iwo Jima at the dedication of the 5th Marine Division cemetery, March 21, 1945. Rabbi Gittelsohn died on December 19, 1995