Vietnam War veteran at CLC Memorial Day event: Live life to honor the fallen
Allen J. Lynch, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War and Medal of Honor recipient, said he once had a post-traumatic stress experience while walking alone in a World War II memorial during a veterans event in Hawaii.
Lynch found himself thinking about trading places with those fallen soldiers when he had what people in his church call a God moment.
"Something slapped me across the face and a voice said 'how dare you?'" Lynch said Friday at College of Lake County's Memorial Day ceremony in Grayslake. "How dare you feel sorry for yourself because these men can never live the life that you're now living."
Lynch, who graduated from CLC in 1978, said he sees Memorial Day as a reminder to honor the fallen in two ways.
The first is to preserve the American way of life so they will not have died in vain.
"The second part is to live the life they could never live, to experience the joy they could never experience again," Lynch said. "To honor their memory by living our lives for our country, our friends and our neighbors."
Lynch, who served as chief of the Illinois attorney general's Veterans Rights Bureau, was among the speakers at CLC's 11th annual event.
Joe Bochantin, the CLC Veterans Coordinator, said he sees a difference in the way each generation of veterans respond when they are thanked for their service. World War II veterans receive it politely and stoically, knowing they've done their patriotic duty. Veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars were too often overlooked and seem genuinely touched when acknowledged and thanked. Many in the new generation of veterans feel a sense of disconnect from their citizen peers because so few serve now.
"But what is common all throughout the generations of veterans is the absolute insistence that the gratitude truly belongs not to them but to their fallen brothers and sisters who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country," Bochantin said.
Because such a small percentage of Americans serve in the armed forces, Rep. Brad Schneider said it is especially important to support gold star families who've lost someone in America's current wars.
"It is our duty to those who've served and died to come together as a community to support all who've defended us and to support their families," said Schneider, a Deerfield Democrat.