Last weekend, just hours after the Rededicate 250 ceremony in Washington, D.C.,
I stood inside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport...



Dear John,

Last weekend, just hours after the Rededicate 250 ceremony in Washington,
D.C., I stood inside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and witnessed
something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

The airport was packed. Flights were delayed. The terminal was crowded with
frustrated travelers, tired families, rolling suitcases, gate changes, long
lines, and all the familiar tension that comes when thousands of people are
trying to get home at the same time.

Then came an announcement over the loudspeaker, followed by a wave of
cheering, applause, whistles, and shouts that began on the far side of the
terminal.

I leaned over to the gentleman sitting next to me and had to raise my voice
for him to hear my question.

"What is going on?"

"It's an Honor Flight," he told me.

That was when I saw them: a long line of men and women, all wearing Honor
Flight T-shirts, many with Veterans of Foreign Wars hats, slowly making their
way toward their waiting aircraft.

Honor Flights bring America's veterans to Washington, D.C., so they can visit
the memorials built in their honor. Many of these men served in wars that
shaped the world we live in, though too many Americans know them only as
chapters in a history book. Many are elderly now. Many are in wheelchairs. Yet
each one carries a living memory of courage, duty, sacrifice, loss,
brotherhood, and love of country.

I pulled my suitcase through the standing crowd to get a closer look and take
pictures. At one point, I was close enough to shake the hands of several of
them as they passed.

As the cheering and applause continued, swelling, rising, and falling as they
slowly moved through the terminal, I started watching the crowd as much as I
watched the veterans. Grown men were crying. Children were high-fiving the
soldiers as they passed. Travelers who had been frustrated moments before were
now standing at attention, clapping, cheering, whistling, and honoring these
veterans with everything they had.









Everyone was on their feet.

For the full 20 to 30 minutes it took for these veterans, most of them in
wheelchairs, to board their aircraft, the terminal did not stop applauding.
Suddenly, no one seemed worried about flights and delays. No one seemed
embarrassed by the tears, the cheers, or the open gratitude. Every person in
that crowded airport seemed to understand that this was not an ordinary
boarding call. This was a moment of honor.

I witnessed a crowd of strangers become a united people, and I was one of them.

As I looked into the faces of these veterans, I thought about the years they
had given, the friends they had lost, the families who had waited for them, and
the country they helped preserve. Some smiled. Some looked overwhelmed. Some
seemed almost surprised that a terminal full of strangers had stopped to honor
them.




And as I shook their hands, I found myself thinking about my own son, who is
in boot camp right now, preparing to serve our nation.

That made the moment deeply personal.

I thought about the mothers in every generation who have watched their sons
and daughters leave home in uniform, proud and afraid at the same time. I
thought about the wives, fiancées, children, parents, siblings, and friends who
never received the reunion they prayed for.

I thought about the men and women whose names are carved on memorials because
they gave everything they had for this country.

As the last of the veterans boarded their plane, a woman near the gate lifted
an authentic ram's-horn shofar above the heads of the stunned crowd and blew
several long, eerie victory blasts.

The same kind of blasts that the children of Israel would have heard in
ancient days.

Chills went up and down my spine, and the terminal full of people stood frozen
while the final blasts echoed into silence.

There, in the middle of a crowded airport filled with tired travelers, these
old soldiers were not ignored. They were not treated as burdens. They were not
rushed past as relics of another age.They were honored as victors.

And as the sound of the shofar carried through the terminal, it felt as though
heaven itself had added its witness to the gratitude of the American people.

Memorial Day is not a long weekend or the unofficial start of summer. It is a
solemn act of remembrance for the men and women who died in service to the
United States of America.

They did not give their lives for comfort or ease. They gave them for their
country, for the brothers beside them, for the families they loved, and for
generations they would never meet. They gave their lives believing America was
worth defending.

That is a debt we can never repay. But we can refuse to forget.

This Memorial Day, before we speak of the battles ahead of us, you and I pause
to remember those who paid the highest price in the battles behind us.

We remember the fallen. We honor the Gold Star families who still carry the
grief of that sacrifice. We thank God for the veterans still among us. And we
pray for those now serving — including young men like my son, stepping into a
long line of duty, discipline, courage, and sacrifice.

Watching that terminal rise to its feet reminded me that America still knows
how to honor what is honorable. Beneath the noise and division of our time,
there remains something deeply good in the American heart when we remember who
we are and what freedom has cost.

This Memorial Day, may we be the kind of people who remember.

May we teach our children that freedom was purchased with courage and blood.
May we speak of the fallen with reverence. May we thank the veterans still
living while we have the chance. And may we ask God to make us worthy stewards
of the freedom we inherited.



Happy Memorial Day Weekend,

Anna

USA Campaign Director
CitizenGO



The radical globalists and woke elites want to erase our values—but together,
we stand strong. CitizenGO is a movement of millions around the world, fighting
every day to defend life, family, and freedom against those who seek to
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