Dedication of Blue Star Marker
Meadow Vista Community Center
November 11, 2012


The Blue Star Memorial Highway Project began in the days after World War II, when almost every family had a Blue Star hung in their window awaiting the return of a loved one, and many families had replaced it with a Gold Star signifying that their loved one would not return.

We honor our veterans today as we recognize that their sacrifice has shielded and defended us from the tyrannies and corruptions of the rest of the world for nearly 2 ½ Centuries.

What we don’t often acknowledge are the Blue Star families who anxiously await the safe return of a loved one, knowing that any minute could bring a knock on the door, a grim officer, and the devastating news.

Nor do we adequately acknowledge the Gold Star families who have received that news.  For these families, every day is Memorial Day and is lived with the gut-wrenching sense of loss and grief that is always just beneath the surface of daily life and never goes away.

The Blue Star Project honors not only those represented by the Blue and Gold Stars, but also the families that display those stars – the families left behind to worry every day until their loved ones return or to grieve every day that their loved ones will not return.

And it speaks volumes for the rest of us who don’t often express these sentiments out of a misplaced fear that we will rekindle their dread or their grief. 

But it is important that these families know that they are not alone; that their friends and neighbors and countrymen are aware of what they are going through, and that we know that we owe the security of our families and the safety of our country to the missing place at their family hearths. 

That’s why these Blue Star markers are so important and why we have come here to dedicate the newest of them.