Memorializing Sacrificial Love for Freedom in Sandpoint

Memorial Day Speech, May 26, 2025

By: Aaron Guyett

It was 1998, when my desire to join the Marine Corps turned into certainty. There was a commercial that showed a young man entering an arena, crawling through obstacles, climbing a crazy steel contraption, pulling a sword from the top, slaying a fire dragon (or a lava monster from hell…whichever way you wanted to see it), and then miraculously turning this young man into a Marine in his dress blues.

I graduated from Post Falls High School in 1999, and found myself on the Marine Corps Recruit Depot’s infamous yellow footprints, getting yelled at by men trying to give those fire dragons and lava monsters a run for their money–drill instructors.

I mean look at me in this dress blue uniform…obviously, I was duped.

But in all seriousness, I didn’t think I was going to fight an actual dragon, but I knew evil existed. And I was pretty certain that the Marine Corps was a fast-track to that fight against evil.

The Marine Corps has this penchant for sapping the joy out of most things. So there is nothing like joining the Marine Corps to have them remove your personal liberty and love, which actually helped me understand its palpable reality as a young and slightly careless young man before the Corps.

They took a boy that was raised in the ever-expanding freedom of these North Idaho mountains, and then sent me to boot camp, locking down every action I produced with a countdown (you’ve got 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…you should be..and we all screamed, “done, sir!”).
Next was Infantry training, and afterward they stuck me in the desert of 29 Palms to hurry-up-and-wait my way through rucking, running, humvee training, and infantry training in 120 degree heat that will make even the strongest men melt.

I don’t know about you, but when I tell stories about training, it is always told with glory (or laughter…or both), but honestly, most of it was just plain hard and often miserable.

Something that gets forgotten by most of us “old-timers” is that a lot of our military training is just waiting and waiting and waiting (even combat was 95% sitting around, waiting for the 5% to happen)…but there was a day that made sense of all the hardship and waiting and training.
I was a twenty-year-old lance corporal, living in the barracks when I watched a plane crash into the towers in New York City, and then I went to chow, and watched another plane crash into the other tower. I knew that the United States of America was attacked, and the liberty and love we all took for granted, was infringed.

I personally ended up in Iraq pursuing the fight for freedom and liberty, but really, I was there for my brothers-in-arms.

But Memorial Day isn’t about those that fought and came home to tell stories about it. It is about those that fought and gave their lives.

Men like Air Force Captain, David I. Lyon, a man from Sandpoint, ID, who died at the hands of a vehicle-born improvised explosive device in Kabul, Afghanistan on December 27, 2013. He and his wife and family knew full-well the risks involved in his service, and yet, he was willing to make and then made the ultimate sacrifice to demonstrate great love, and give freedom to his fellow troops and an entire nation.

 Do you ever wonder why we cherish freedom and love so much?

I have. A lot.

Obviously, we face obstacles to liberty and love in the form of deception, manipulation, greed, envy, lust, and the fear of men.

But the reason we cherish it so much is because it is how we are made. We cannot escape this reality. Our Triune God created us this way.

I believe it was said better by the founding fathers of our nation… “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Fighting dragons and evil men to establish, protect and provide liberty to our fellow man, woman, and child is intrinsic to our story, and it is because we are part of His great story. And God’s great story has a climactic middle, and it is this: We can have freedom in Jesus Christ, because he died on the cross to defeat The dragon, and win The bride–His church. It is THE greatest story ever told.

And this story of sacrificial love and freedom is not only good, it is beautiful, and even greater…it is true. It is the great hinge on which the story of the cosmos turns. Believe this story of Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, confess He is Lord, and be saved.

Memorial day gives us a moment to see this great salvific act, imaged by those that we have known, are related to, and have lived in our lifetimes.

Sandpoint, Bonner county, Idaho, and these United States of America are filled with ordinary men that displayed extraordinary courage, making the ultimate sacrifice to give us life, liberty, and the opportunity to pursue happiness. Men like Captain David Lyon, and SSgt William B. Hunt.

SSgt Hunt (Now MSgt Hunt) was a Sandpoint man who after joining the Army did multiple tours in Vietnam.

(By the way…my family had the great opportunity to place the U.S. flag next to his headstone on Saturday, when you look out, you will see United States of America flags next to headstones, honoring our Military veterans posthumously.)

While on Hunt’s third tour of duty, he made his helo returning from R&R, divert into a hot zone to help his fellow warriors (he wasn’t even in his combat gear). Then leaving the helicopter he flew in on, knowing the danger and risk of plunging himself headlong into enemy fire on November 4th, 1966 in South Vietnam. He made this sacrifice, to give his fellow soldiers a chance at life. He was last seen suffering from grievous injuries, providing protective fire for the men he came to save.



And men like Michael Probst, a Marine brother of mine who was a part of my first unit in the Marine Corps, 1st Tank Battalion, TOW Platoon, an anti-tank infantry unit. He and his section responded to an IED attack in Fallujah, Iraq. He went outside of the forward observation base, to provide protection and security, not because doing so was safe and easy, but because they were his brothers in arms and he would die to protect them. In the midst of him providing his fellow Marines security, another IED exploded, and ultimately took his life on February 14, 2006.

And men like Corporal Charles Leon Gilliland, who was the youngest military member to receive the Medal of Honor posthumously. He was 17 years old when he was killed in action in the Korean War on April 25th, 1951. Gilliland was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions when his unit was overwhelmed by Chinese communist forces, volunteering to stay and fight so his unit could withdraw.
 
If there is no sacrificial love, there is no freedom.  “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” John 8:36. Winning the War for Independence didn't just separate us from Great Britain, it gave us liberty. The demonstration of sacrificial love that these aforementioned men and the other heroes that gave their life for you and me, was an act freely chosen by them to Give us freedom. Or as G.K. Chesterton puts it, "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
But don’t be fooled, evil is still prowling around, trying to devour whom it may. Whether external or internal, evils like deception, manipulation, violence, abuse, coercion, greed, envy, lust, and the fear of men seem to be more popular today than ever, but this Memorial Day we can see it with different eyes. We can view it with the courage of those we are choosing to memorialize. We can defeat the dragons, lava monsters, and enemy. We may not magically change into a dress blue uniform like this, but you will preserve life and liberty.

This is why today, right here in Pinecrest Memorial Park and Lakeview Cemetery, we choose to remember and memorialize the warriors that stood and fought, even in the face of great fear. May we go beyond just remembering these men in this ceremony, but every day, may their action, spur us to the same action, that we lay down our lives for those we love. Just as the Apostle John records Jesus’s words in John 15:12-13, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

Thank you.

May God Bless you, Sandpoint, Idaho, and the United States of America.

Happy Memorial Day!