05/25/2026
A Sigma Nu Fraternity Grand Chaplain Memorial Day Message:
Every generation of men inherits something from the generation before it. Most of what we inherit is ordinary. Some of it was purchased at an extraordinary price.
Sigma Nu was born in the shadow of that price. When James Frank Hopkins and Greenfield Quarles enrolled at VMI, they came not as boys discovering the world but as veterans who had already seen it at its worst. They had marched, they had buried friends, and they had watched a generation of American men disappear into the ground. And then they came home, picked up their books, and tried to build something worthy of what had been lost.
That is the tradition of the Citizen Soldier. Not as a man who lives for war, but a man who answers the call when it comes, who endures what must be endured, and who returns determined to make civilian life as honorable as the sacrifice that protected it. Founders Hopkins and Quarles were those men. They carried their service not as a badge of glory but as a standard of conduct. When they saw cruelty at VMI, they did not look away. Men who have seen real suffering do not have much patience for the manufactured kind. They, joined by Founder Riley, clasped hands on the Bible on a moonlit October night and pledged to do better.
That pledge became Sigma Nu.
The Creed of Sigma Nu calls us to believe in the life of Love, to walk in the way of Honor, and to serve in the light of Truth. It does not promise ease. It promises purpose. The men and women we remember this weekend understood that in their bones. They did not wait for certainty before acting. They loved their country, their families, and they walked in the way of honor when it cost them everything.
Brothers, I ask you today to do three things.
First, remember, by name, if you can. Seek out a story. Find the veteran in your chapter’s history, in your family, in your community who gave everything. Say their name aloud. Names are the last thing we owe the dead.
Second, grieve honestly. Memorial Day is not a holiday. It is a holy day. The cookouts and the games are not wrong, but let them not be escapes. Sit for a moment in the weight of what this day actually means. Sorrow is not weakness. It is the proper human response to sacrifice.
Third, live worthy. The men and women we honor today are not distant abstractions. They are a standard. They walked in the way of honor when the way was hard. You may never be called to give what they gave. But you will be called daily to choose honor over convenience, truth over comfort, service over self. To believe in the life of love when love is costly. That is what the Creed asks of us. Live it well.
To the memory of all Sigma Nu brothers who served and fell, in every war, in every theater, in every generation, we say: you are not forgotten. Your sacrifice has shaped the world your brothers now inhabit. We carry your names and your example forward.
This Memorial Day, let us be reminded to be men worthy of their cost.
Fraternally Yours,
Drew Logsdon (Western Kentucky)
Grand Chaplain
(Pictured: The Robert L. Marchman, III Memorial Flag Pavilion and War Memorial at Sigma Nu Fraternity Headquarters in Lexington, Va. The War Memorial, dedicated in 2019, pays tribute to 621 brothers whose lives were lost in service to our country.)
