It’s a roar not soon forgotten when the field of 33 drivers rounds the curve to the paddock straightaway and the pace car exits the track. The thrill of the Indy500 is unmatched in motorsports, and the refreshing, replenishing, revered beverage associated with this great race is MILK. On Sunday, two Indiana dairy farmers (selected each year as a rookie and a done-it-before) not only provided that winner’s refreshment, they greeted race goers. People love talking to the actual dairy farmers who personally deliver the “coolest trophy in sports.”

Having the opportunity to cover the Indy500 and the celebratory bottle of milk three years ago, the roar of the cars exceeding 200 mph for 250 laps around a 2.5-mile oval, and its famous ending with the celebratory milk, were preceded by a far more important and time-honored remembrance of our fallen countrymen who have paid the supreme sacrifice so we may be free.

What is freedom in today’s fast-paced ever-changing world?

According to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, Freedom is “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint; absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government; the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.”

Today (Monday, May 25) we honor with solemn gratitude the memory of those who bought our freedom at a dear price — those who gave all to protect it. Our freedom as a
democracy is to be cherished, revered, protected and practiced with integrity. We owe a debt of gratitude every day of the year.

In the 1982 words of President Ronald Reagan: “Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation’s defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence. Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day. To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country’s own.”

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