As both a veteran (U.S. Navy, 30 years) and an amateur student of history, I was moved by Meaghan Mobb’s commentary, “The true meaning of Memorial Day: those who fell in war” (Star-Advertiser, May 25). What particularly got me was her sentence, “We are most at risk when we forget where we come from, where we’ve been, and who was there.”

The philosopher George Santayana stated that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. I will add, for it is less fatal but just as tragic, any nation that never learns its past will lose its soul.

Paul C. Franke

Salt Lake

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