Gary Will Kreie

Lyrics

This is memorial day in
Our quiet town
Me and my son attend
Outside
Each year grade-schoolers
Talk to the crowd
And this year one of them is
Mine.

Fourth-grade boys, fourth-grade girls
Step up to the mic to read about
World War I, World War II
Korea, and Vietnam
Each one speaks up loud and clear
As folks lean in to hear
How heroes lived and where they fell
Through stories fourth graders tell

One died in a forest glen
Just days before that war would end
Buried with his high school friends
In France. A street’s named after them
One died with a missing plane
One inside a submarine, one
Major leaguer never played
His grown-up kids are here today

Fourth-grade boys, fourth-grade girls
Step up to the mic to read about
World War I, World War II
Korea, and Vietnam
Each one speaks up loud and clear
As folks lean in to hear
How heroes lived and where they fell
Through stories fourth graders tell

God teach us the lessons
That end the need for war
So when my grade-schooler grows up
He won’t have stories told, by

Fourth-grade boys, fourth-grade girls
Ten to twenty years from now
How he lived. Where he fell
Through words a fourth-grader tells

I go to my fourth-grader
As Taps begins to play
I say good job. He nods, as the
Sun shines on his face