Remarks of District Attorney Daniel F. Conley Memorial Day Exercises -- Jamaica Plain Post 76 May 27, 2002 I thank Post 76 for having me here today, and thank all of you for coming here, on this most solemn of our American holidays, to honor our war dead. As I thought about what I might say today, how I might try in some small way to honor this great day and those we are remembering, my mind started drifting to the past, like the pages flipping off a calendar in reverse, going back into time. That's because what we are here to honor today is history - our history, and more relevantly, your history, a history of battles and bravery and young men whose dreams expired too soon, and too far from home. That's why it is appropriate, today, to look into the past. So I asked myself, where were we ten years ago in this constant battle for freedom and democracy and right? We were a year removed from driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and our troops were preparing for the next global engagements that lay ahead in the coming years - Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia … so many places where we would be called to protect innocent people. Where were we twenty years ago? In the midst of the Cold War, our armed forces were on constant alert against the Communist threat. Again, we carried the banner for democracy, and our soldiers were on the front lines, stationed across the globe. Thirty years ago? America's sons were slogging through jungles and over hilltops in places like Da Nang and Dong Ha, fighting, and dying, for this enduring notion: freedom. Fifty years back? The story was the same, only the places were different: Inchon, Pusan, the Chosin Reservoir. I know you remember Korea. We can never forget. And sixty years ago? Our sailors were on carriers and destroyers and battleships, fighting a fierce enemy on the sea in the Battles of Midway and the Coral Sea, and their counterparts in the Army were readying for the hard invasions that would soon follow in bloody succession: North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and finally, the drive to Berlin. And then, my mind's eye returned to the present, and I realized that things really haven't changed that much. Today - May 27, 2002 - American men and women are again in a hard and foreign land, fighting to protect us from the evil intentions of murderous terrorists. No, things really haven't changed that much when it comes to the sacrifices our veterans make for us. How many hundreds of thousands have answered the call across all the years? They came from big cities and small towns, from suburbs and farms and tenements, from places like Dorchester and Jamaica Plain and Roxbury and South Boston. They came from your streets. From your homes. And all they wanted was to do their duty, serve their country, and come home, go to school, get a job, get married, raise a family - the same things we've all desired. Only they never got the chance. That is freedom's price, and that will ever be its legacy in this great country. But how do we ever repay these people? How do we honor them, living and dead? We honor them, I believe, by how we live our lives, how we, in turn, serve others - not just one day a year, when we put American flag pins on our lapels and march down the street and wave to the crowds, but every day, remembering what they so willingly gave up for us, and vowing to make sure their sacrifices were not in vain. In short, to follow their example, and keep this country strong and free, a place, as President Lincoln said, where right makes might, and not the other way around. Speaking from a public safety standpoint, I can tell you that there is much we are doing to do just that. One thing we are doing is working to protect many of those veterans, especially our older ones, or those who live with disabilities, from crime and harm. My office's Elders and Persons with Disabilities Unit prosecutes many people every year who commit crimes against senior citizens or disabled persons. A lot of these cases involve fraud, or theft, or abuse. Our government should not tolerate any crime or abuse against anyone from our Greatest Generation. That's why I am in the process, despite these tough financial times, of putting another prosecutor and even more resources into our elders and disabilities unit. I promise you this: we are doing everything in our power to protect our seniors and persons with disabilities from crime and harm. We can further honor the sacrifices of our patriotic sons and daughters by making sure everyone can enjoy the freedom from fear bought so dearly with their gallant actions. Those boys who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy and in the firefights of Vietnam probably never thought that the freedoms they so bravely won on foreign soil could be undermined by fear and terror right here on our own streets. They died to protect us from dictators and despots and terrorists. If they were here today, what would they think of those common street criminals whose heinous actions undermine the very freedoms that our best and brightest died for? What would they think if they knew that fear and terror existed in the very neighborhoods where they were born and raised, on the very streets that they left behind for war? What would think if they knew that drugs threatened to strangle our communities and ruin our children? What would they think if they knew that in some neighborhoods, guns and street violence threatened to keep honest, law-abiding Americans in fear? That is why we have recommitted ourselves to the critical work of ridding our neighborhoods of drugs, gang violence, and fear. What would our sons and daughters who died overseas, on this, the first Memorial Day since Sept. 11, think of the current world climate, where fanatical terrorists are trying to do what Hitler and Hirohito could not - destroy America? That is why our resolve to root out terrorists must never fail, and that is why we in local government must continue to find innovative ways to combat terrorists on the home front, like a partnership my office has entered into with the police and the federal government to check to see if people we prosecute for crimes are illegal aliens. Our veterans' gift to us is the future. Our gift to them is to make the future the best it can be, a place where everyone - regardless of age or race or class - can live their lives in peace and safety, free from the fears of crime. Our gift, to those who made the greatest sacrifice, must be a future where our children hear symphonies instead of gunfire, where our children visit museums instead of jail cells, where our children look up to their parents instead of gang members. Our gift to them must be a future where seniors can walk to the market or sit on their front porches without fear of street violence, where Americans can travel freely and congregate in public places without fear of homicidal terrorists. That is what we owe to them, not just today, not just on the Fourth of July, not just on Veterans' Day, but every day. That is what we owe to all who ever served, and especially to those whose dreams were cut short in the searing fire of so many wars across all the years, those who are now forever 19 and 20 and 21, who rest for all time beneath simple wooden crosses in a French field, or whose names are carved into a cold sheet of black rock that juts out of the ground in the capital of this great country. This country that they made great. This greatness that we are called to preserve, in their memory. Thank you.