4th of July - All Gave Some and Some Gave All!

Guest Blog Alert - Darren here today and appreciate Carrie allowing me to post today's blog. 

Every year, on this particular day of the year, America ceases its normal daily activities and celebrates its marked independence from Great Britain on a day known to all as Independence Day.

As a kid, and way prior to me joining the Navy, Independence Day honestly did not have meaning to me other than eating BBQ Chicken with white sauce, homemade ice cream and having bottle rocket wars with my neighborhood friends.  All I really understood about this holiday was that this was The Day in history that some really old guys (and one with a really big signature) signed a piece of paper and because those signatures were penned to paper, our country was now free...and to celebrate we get great food and fireworks to boot.  What's not right about that?

Fast forward to a young man who found himself 10 days into Navy Boot Camp in Chicago, Illinois and a long way from home in Slip Up, Alabama.  While missing the food and festivities of days gone by, I still remember listening to the fireworks while lying in my rack (bed) that night and began to look beyond myself and to ponder what it meant to those young men who sacrificially gave all that they had (in which over 217,000 US Service-member deaths occurred) for the freedoms I could enjoy today.   For the first time I understood that Independence Day wasn't about myself but rather it was about those who had gone before me during the Revolutionary War, who risked all they had for a future they could only imagine...and for that...I am forever grateful and honored to serve along side them more than 200 years later.  Their deaths were not in vain and we remember that All Gave Some and Some Gave All.  I want to encourage you all today to take a moment and reflect on the selfless sacrifice of those who believed in something greater than themselves and risked it all.

Today, on this Independence Day 2015, the Seiberts wish you all the best and we are forever grateful to those who took up arms, who stood in the face of tyranny, shook their fists, and uttered courageous words such as Patrick Henry so eloquently said long ago...

“Give me liberty or give me death."

[From a speech given at Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry.]