The Civil War played a strong part in two Veterans Day messages Friday.
In his homily at the annual St. Peter Church Veterans Day Mass, Deacon Thomas Fischer focused on messages from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, delivered 154 years ago.
Veterans Day - which got its start remembering the end of World War I, 99 years ago today, on Nov. 11, 1917 - "is a tribute to all men and all women who have served, or are currently serving, our great country," Fischer said, "and to those who, in their service, gave their very precious lives to us, for our liberty."
He called Lincoln's short message - only 273 words, which took less than three minutes to deliver - "one of the greatest speeches honoring those who had served and those who had fallen."
In a separate speech to the Jefferson City Veterans Council's annual program at the Capitol, outgoing American Red Cross Director Dave Griffith discussed his agency's history and service - beginning with Clara Barton's efforts to treat the wounded while they were on the Civil War battlefields.
"It was a title clerk (in her early 40s) who saw a greater need during the Civil War and began her humanitarian career," Griffith said, "by using the skills she learned as a nurse to bring aid and comfort to the soldiers fighting in battle. She was not content to work from the quickly constructed battlefield hospitals, but insisted on taking her cadre of nurses to the battlefield and bringing injured soldiers off the front line to a place of safety where they could be treated."
And he noted, Barton worked with both Union and Confederate commanders to assist anyone injured.
Both men noted the military often has been tested in its job to protect America's principles of freedom and equality because, Fischer said, "there are not that many countries around the world that were conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality."
He told about 125 people attending the service: "As Lincoln said, only a nation founded on such principles of freedom can long endure. We've been here for several hundred years, now, with these principles - (and) brave men and women, both the living and the dead, have struggled desperately to prepare and secure our freedoms."
Griffith noted Barton organized the national Red Cross in 1881 - when she was 60 - and retired in 1904 after 23 years as president.
Thirteen years later, as the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson's War Council of business and government leaders took over the American Red Cross and reorganized it, Griffith said, "into a sprawling enterprise with 14 regional divisions, 3,684 chapters, 12,700 staff and more than 20 million members."
And, he said, "The largest force behind the wartime growth of the American Red Cross was its army of 8 million female volunteers (who) produced 371 million 'relief articles' (such as) surgical dressings; hospital garments and supplies; sweaters, hats and other knitted items for soldiers and sailors; and clothing for refugees."
Fischer said part of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was a reminder we never can forget those who served, "especially on this special day here - let us really, really remember the people who stood in the face of fire and risked their lives."
Still, he noted, "Lincoln also gives us encouragement, and he gives us a task. It is now for us, the living, to carry on what has come before us so that those who rest in their final piece, as Lincoln says, 'did not die in vain.'
"So we are the next generation that carries it on."
One of Lincoln's messages, Fischer said, was a call to a future mission, even as the Civil War was continuing.
Noting America's government was of the people, by the people and for the people, Lincoln noted "that these liberties that many fought for and many have died for will live long and endure."
That gave us a new "mission we must fulfill, in order for the next generation to enjoy the same freedoms and liberties that we have today," Fischer said.
Born on the Civil War battlefields, Griffith said, the Red Cross began with one mission to serve those involved in war - a mission that remains a key part of its work - but now it has many tasks.
All are generally focused on "service to those facing the darkest days of their lives, from a family fire to massive flooding to family members deployed to all parts of the world to the lifesaving skills taught by volunteer instructors," Griffith said.
In Jefferson City alone, he said, the organization "has provided aid to tens of thousands facing their own, personal disaster - and that mission continues today."
Griffith urged the 75 people in the Capitol Rotunda audience to consider work as a Red Cross volunteer.
Griffith is one of three Republicans who have said they want to succeed Jay Barnes in the state House of Representatives. The others are Jane Beetem and Pat Rowe Kerr.
In his homily at the St. Peter Veterans Day Mass, Fischer also talked about those "silent heroes who operate behind the lines, if you will, (and) do their duty in support of the loved ones who are in the military, who maintain the homefront, take care of the kids, handle home repairs, car repairs (and) financial challenges."
Like those fighting in a war, he said, "There is great emotional sacrifice in all of this" for those who stay behind, worry what is happening and wait for the news about it.