Friends Old, New, and Soon to Be,
On April 11, 2026, on a Navy pier in Norfolk, Virginia, I sat amongst a crowd with my father, like me, once an officer in the Marine Corps, my step-mother, and my brother. We were there as a result of events set in motion on December 18, 1965, when then-First Lieutenant Harvey C. Barnum found himself in a firefight as a member of Hotel Company, Second Battalion, Ninth Marine Regiment.
Barnum was only supposed to be in Vietnam for ninety days. He’d arrived as a young Lieutenant in Okinawa, so his command sent him to get a little experience. In the process, he received the Medal of Honor for his actions in his first firefight. It’s been my own experience that medal citations rarely do honor to the actions described therein, either in gravity or extremity, but you can read the story, stripped of blood and smoke and fear, here.
A few years later, Major Harvey Barnum was the executive officer of the battalion in which my father served. Executive officers run the staffs of military units, and my father reported to Barnum regularly. It made enough impact upon him that a few years ago, he reached out to now-retired Colonel Barnum, who kindly invited us all to the commissioning of America’s newest guided missile destroyer, the USS Harvey C. Barnum.
In attendance at the ship’s commissioning were men and women from every decade of Barnum’s life: Marines from that day in 1965, those like my Dad, who served with him later, the usual complement of politicians and local hoi polloi, the crew of the ship, and most inspiringly, fellow Medal of Honor recipients Paris Davis, James Livingston, Walter Marm, Will Swenson, and Michael Thornton. I was one day old when Thornton became the only Medal of Honor recipient to earn the Medal for saving a fellow Medal of Honor recipient, Tom Norris. The story is currently being filmed as a movie.
Of course, something separates all this from the purpose of Memorial Day: every one of whom I’ve written is alive. But gatherings like that for Colonel Barnum exemplify what service members and citizens alike are charged to do: remember.
To that end, on Memorial Day eleven years ago, I wrote The List. Tom Beckbe has been kind enough to keep this piece of writing, and the names within it, alive year after year. It offers you, if you are one of the increasing number of Americans who do not know a military service member, much less one who gave the last full measure, a name to keep on your lips. Perhaps it offers a story to look up and read to your child on Memorial Day. Maybe it simply gives you someone to quietly contemplate. And if you do have your own name, perhaps it reminds you that somewhere, someone else also has the name of that person you loved in their heart.
There are new names on The List this year. That means your fellow citizens are freshly reckoning with the loss of husbands and fathers. Please take a moment and read about them. Their names are yours to carry.
Yours,
Russell Worth Parker
Editor-in-Chief, Tom Beckbe
