The Last Full Measure of Devotion

It was the 22nd Annual Candlelight Vigil at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Law enforcement officers have a difficult job, one in which they and their families donát know if they will return home safely after each shift. Because of multiple threats, officers have never been more challenged than they are today, Craig W. Floyd, chairman and CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, said during the ceremony.

The 116 officers who died in 2009 was the lowest law enforcement fatality total since 1959, when 109 officers were killed, the Memorial Fund said. In addition, 208 officers who died in previous years but whose deaths had been lost to history were added to the Memorial this year.

Three of the officers remembered are Pittsburgh officers Stephen Mayhle, Paul Sciullo II and Eric Kelly, who were killed April 4, 2009.

The monument in Judiciary Square now contains the names of 18,983 law enforcement officers who have died in law enforcement service throughout U.S. history from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, and federal law enforcement and military police agencies.

It is hallowed ground for the families who have been touched by the deaths of these brave men and women who served to protect us. It is hallowed ground for us as well.

We thank the families who gave us their loved ones. We thank the officers, still serving or now retired, for their service.

The words of Abraham Lincoln delivered in the Gettysburg Address are appropriate for us to ponder in closing.

"It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."