This Memorial Day let's not forget our promise

I'll be remembering those we lost but working towards saving those who serve today

Memorial Day is personal for me

Tomorrow I plan to make my way to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery to honor our fallen and those who served and passed for Memorial Day. My father is buried there along with my mother, amongst his fellow Marines, and thousands of others who served our nation.

I will spend time cherishing the memories of those I served with that didn’t come home to their families. I will remember sadly the ones who did, and ended their own lives later. Remember the ones that served, gave back to the nation still more, and passed on. Each of them deserves to be remembered.

My father, John E.J. Wellman, in World War II

But I am not among them yet.

I even have a reminder on my arm that says, “I’m not done yet.”

I am still here. Still finding a way to serve my nation, my community, and my family as I was taught to do by Sergeant John Edwin Joseph (Joe) Wellman, United States Marine Corps. You see the debt we owe our brothers and sisters who fell is to carry on. It’s too live the lives we are given and to honor that gift in any way we can.

Memorial Day is not about speeches. It is not about flags in campaign photos or polished statements from politicians who have never had to carry the cost of war in their own lives. It is certainly not about those who claim some sort of “borrowed valor” from knowing those that served and seek to burnish their own credentials.

It is about the men and women who gave everything for this country.

It is about the families who still set a place in their hearts for someone who never came home.

It is about names etched in stone, folded flags handed across gravesides, and the silence that follows when the bugle stops.

I have known that silence. I have watched young Americans carry burdens most of Washington will never understand. So when I say we owe the fallen more than gratitude, I mean it. We owe them honesty. We owe them seriousness. We owe them leaders who do not treat war like a talking point, a television performance, or a political escape hatch.

This one is heavy

That is why this Memorial Day feels especially heavy. As families across Missouri honor the dead, like mine, this country is once again watching a war in the Middle East drag on with far too little accountability from the people elected to provide it. Donald Trump is threatening more strikes on Iran. U.S. forces are boarding Iranian tankers. The region is on edge. Oil prices, fertilizer costs, shipping routes, and family budgets are all being dragged into the consequences.

Yesterday, I watched Pete Hegseth go to my alma mater, West Point, and deliver the most despicable speech ever given to the Corps of Cadets. Smearing our diversity. Smearing transgender service members who volunteered for our nation. Spreading lies and bigotry before nearly a thousand new lieutenants.

And Congress, including Ann Wagner, is still pretending that they don’t have any role in any of it. Like the Constitution is just a suggestion. That oversight is really just sort of optional.

It is not optional.

If a president sends Americans into harm’s way, Congress has a duty to ask hard questions, demand clear answers, and decide whether this war has legal authorization, a defined mission, and a responsible end state. That is not partisan.

That is constitutional.

That is the job. The oath members of Congress take is not to a president, not to a party, and not to the comfort of avoiding a difficult vote. It is to the Constitution and to the people they represent. Nearly the same oath I took the first time on a hot July day in 1983 on the Plain at West Point.

We know accountability

Missouri families understand accountability. They live it every day. If you make a bad decision at work, you answer for it. If you blow the family budget, you deal with the consequences. If your child signs up to serve this country, you expect the people in power to treat that life with the gravity it deserves.

I am loath to talk about politics on Memorial Day weekend, but Ann Wagner has had years in Washington to prove she has the backbone to stand up when it matters. Again and again, she chooses the safest path for herself. Silence. Deflection. Obedience. She follows the administration, then hopes Missouri families will not notice the cost.

Standing in Jefferson Barracks we can’t not notice the costs.

I notice. Veterans notice. Military families notice.

Honoring the fallen means more than thanking them after they are gone. Waving a flag. Posting a pathetic graphic on Facebook.

It means refusing to waste the lives of those still wearing the uniform. It means demanding answers before more families are handed folded flags. It means remembering that patriotism is not blind loyalty to power.

Patriotism is loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the people who bear the cost when leaders fail.

This Memorial Day, I am thinking about the heroes I lost like CW3 Hal Reichle and SPC Mike Daniels. I am thinking about the families who carry that loss every day. And I am thinking about every American in uniform right now who deserves leaders with the courage to ask the questions war always demands.

CW3 Hal Reichle and SPC Mike Daniels in Saudi Arabia

We owe the fallen our remembrance.

We owe the living our accountability.