A LEGISLATIVE COMMEMORATION, Posthumously honoring Lance Corporal Joseph Welke.

    WHEREAS, Joseph Welke volunteered to serve in the United States Marine Corps, was a member of the Rapid City community, and selflessly paid the terrible costs for our freedoms while serving in Iraq on November 20, 2004; and

    WHEREAS, Lance Corporal Joseph Welke's service and ultimate sacrifice were in keeping with the highest traditions of South Dakota's veterans and the United States Armed Forces; and

    WHEREAS, we feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of ours which shall attempt to beguile the family and friends from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But we cannot refrain from even now tendering the consolation that may be found in this heartfelt appreciation and respect of the people of South Dakota that Joseph died protecting; and

    WHEREAS, we pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of his family's and friends' bereavement, and leave them only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that is theirs to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom:

    NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT COMMEMORATED, by the Eighty-Eighth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, that Lance Corporal Joseph Welke is posthumously honored, commended, and remembered for his service and noble sacrifices for the people of South Dakota. In token of South Dakota's common perpetual grief at his loss, this commemoration is enrolled and appropriately immortalized for posterity. Fair winds and following seas, Marine. Long may your duty be, guarding the streets of gold. Semper Fidelis.