David Yoho is 97 years old. He was 16 when he joined the Merchant Marine and shipped off to fight in World War II. This Memorial Day weekend, standing in the rain at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., he delivered a message to young Americans that has since gone viral — and for once, something going viral actually matters.
"We gave up our yesterdays for your tomorrows."
Let that one sit for a second.
Yoho didn't need a teleprompter. He didn't need talking points or a communications team. He stood at the memorial built to honor the sacrifice of his generation and spoke from a place that most of us will never know — the place where a 16-year-old boy becomes a man overnight because his country called and he answered.
"When you're 16, you're a child playfully in your streets," Yoho told the crowd, "and the day you enter the military, that stops." He was a kid. They all were. Sixteen million Americans served in the Second World War. Over 400,000 of them never came home. Yoho's branch, the Merchant Marine, had the highest casualty rate of any wartime service, with 733 ships lost to enemy action and some 250,000 Americans serving in that role. These men ran supply convoys — including the infamous Murmansk route — knowing full well that a torpedo could send them to the bottom of the Atlantic before breakfast.
And now David Yoho is one of the last ones still standing.
He knows it, too. "God is great and God is good and he kept this old sucker alive," he said, drawing laughs and tears in equal measure. The man is turning 98 in six weeks. He's earned the right to call himself whatever he wants.
But it was his plea to the younger generation that hit hardest. Yoho looked at the crowd — soaked in the rain, gathered at a memorial most Americans only see in photographs — and asked them to carry the message forward. "Tell your friends about this place," he said. "Tell them about veterans and say to them that we gave up our yesterdays for your tomorrows. Tell them it was a 16-year-old boy in the heart and mind and body of a 98-year-old veteran of World War II."
I'm not going to add a punchline here. I'm not going to crack wise about whatever AOC tweeted this week or which blue-haired professor is trying to cancel the flag. Not today.
This weekend, we pause. We remember that the freedom to argue about everything we argue about — the politics, the culture wars, the taxes, the border — all of it exists because men like David Yoho got on ships at 16 and sailed toward the guns. We live in the tomorrows they gave up their yesterdays for, and most of us have never once been asked to sacrifice anything close to what they gave.
"We are the last of a breed who you sponsored to represent you, your families," Yoho said. He's right. That breed is almost gone. The youngest WWII veterans are in their late nineties now. Every month, more of them leave us. When they're gone, there will be no one left who can stand at that memorial in the rain and say "I was there."
Yoho closed with a line that should be etched in stone somewhere: "I'm going to be 98 years old in six weeks, and I take no apologies at any time for the time I take to tell you, without you, this wouldn't exist."
Without you, this wouldn't exist. That's the whole thing, right there.
LifeZette reported on the speech as the video spread across social media this Memorial Day weekend. If you haven't watched it yet, find it. Share it. Make your kids watch it. Make their kids watch it.
David Yoho gave up his yesterdays so we could have our tomorrows. The least we can do is remember his name.
