Medal of Honor headstone placed on fallen Oviedo soldier’s grave

Medal of Honor headstone placed on fallen Oviedo soldier’s grave this morning but as the Orlando Sentinelreported hundreds were there, it amazed me there were not more. How does a service like this not get everyone to attend? Even Florida’s new Governor Scott was there to honor the life of Staff Sgt. Robert Miller without saying a word in public. The speeches were left up to military brass. Patriot Guard riders and the Nam Knights were there as well. General Dunn walked around the crowd and made it a point to shake hands and thank them for coming. High school kids from Junior ROTC stood for over an hour as cars pulled in. All of this for this one young life gone while trying to save the lives of his friends.

How hard is it to honor the lives of the men and women giving all they have for this country? We can and always will argue about the worthiness of wars. Early Americans did more than argue over fighting England for independence. Loyalists actually tried to kill off the Patriots. The northern states had to fight the southern states. Every other war this nation has been involved in has been one argument after another but when it comes to the men and women with their lives on the line they should never be forgotten about. But this nation is disconnected from all of them unless they happen to have someone directly involved in Afghanistan or Iraq. Even the local media dropped the ball on this. I tried to search for the names of the brass at this service but couldn’t find a single report with them in it. There was such little coverage of this that I can’t figure out if the lack of interest is because the media has not really cared to report on it or they didn’t report because the public doesn’t care.

They go through so much when they are deployed and so do their families. Veterans know full well what kind of sacrifice we’re really talking about but the rest of us never manage to see the additional sacrifice they make when the rest of us didn’t pay any attention to what they did because we as a nation sent them. We pay hardly no attention to the wounded and the amputees. We pay little attention to the men and women coming home with a lifetime of more sacrifice when they are afflicted by PTSD. We walk by them when some of them end up homeless and are afraid of others because they “act funny” in large crowds. Some of us see a uniform and turn our eyes away from them because we don’t know what to say to someone like them. How can we know anything about them when they are unselfish serving this country and the rest of us only really care about our own problems? How can we understand someone with their own problems taking on the security of the nation on top of everything else? Going away from their own families for a year at a time and never knowing where they will be transferred to?

How can we know what it is like for them to come home to a nation that has been all too willing to forget all about them?

The people showing up at this service this morning remember them. The crowds showing up at military funerals to shield the families from the hateful Westboro Group remember them. There are many in this country remembering them but like them, they are the minority of the population of this nation. That is why it was so sad this cemetery was not full of local people coming out to honor one of their own when he became one of the very few to receive the Medal of Honor and show support for the family he left behind.