Last week I walked on Omaha beach, on the coast of Normandy, France and Memorial Day will never again be the same for me.

As I looked over a precipice at Omaha Beach, the specter of what took place on June 6, 1944 — 65 years ago this year, came alive.  An eerie silence filled the air and it seemed fitting.  For just a moment in time, in my mind’s eye, I felt that I was there, a witness of that day, on D-Day, and through it, I experienced the terror, heard the roar of the heavy bombardment of the Atlantic wall fortifications, felt the land tremble as the massive movement of the special armored vehicles moved forward, and watched in horror as a battle-hardened enemy persisted to fight for its life against the mightiest military force that had ever been gathered in history.

I could see the quiet approach of the paratroopers as they started their slow glide down to land, before their lives would change all together.  I became that very first soldier, Dawson who, upon stepping off the first amphibious carrier that landed on the sand dunes, was instantly struck down before reaching the beach.  I became the 1,465 young men who died within the first five minutes of the massive assault, never knowing the role they would play in history.

Earlier in the day, I had walked into a Nazi bunker, which jolted my very being. Its voluminous concrete and steel fortifications, proved indestructible, even for the powerful Allied Air Force.  It stands today, as it was then, the structure whole, only now it is surrounded by wild growing brush and weeds that threaten to camouflage it.  Nazi bunkers still dot a major portion of the Normandy coastline today, standing intact as symbols of a day that changed the world forever.

And, in the museum at Omaha Beach, there are countless newsreels of the invasion, voice recordings of General Eisenhower and Field Marshall Montgomery as they struggled with their decision, and personal photos of soldiers as they forged ahead into a seemingly insurmountable onslaught of enemy fire.

While the museum captures the history, the cemetery captures the overwhelming price that was paid.  As I walked through the stillness of the cemetery, a sudden ferocious wind swept over the tens of thousands of graves and I shuddered at the coldness of it all.

Memorial Day needs to be more than just family gatherings, picnics, weekend holidays, etc.

It needs to be just what it says – a day to remember and a day to be with those who had the valor and courage to give up their own future, so that others could have a future — in liberty.

What have we learnt from it all?

The simplicity of it is amazing, but the impact of it is astounding… In one day, Facebook’s new Organ Donor sign up option had 6,000 people enrolled, through 22 state registries, as opposed to less than 400 on any other normal day.

Ingenious, really…

The Facebook feature allows users to share their decision to be an organ donor on the website. More than 100,000 did sign up on the first day Facebook announced the option. The DMV has offered that option for years, but apparently the numbers had remained dismal, by comparison.

With this feature, Facebook has provided a bolt of hope to the more than 114,000 Americans who currently have their lives on hold while waiting for transplants of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs. Although I am sure that Facebook never considered this program as falling under anything resembling a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, it surely feels like it.

But not quite, and here’s why…

Most CSR programs are geared to applying a company’s core competencies to advance social change in a way that contributes to business results and gives a company a competitive advantage. Most such programs, offer public good but are, in essence, keyed up to mitigate the impact of a company’s activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Most programs are either philanthropic in nature, as in donations for disaster relief or for the public good in general; support educational awareness campaigns, as in safety or health; or are sponsorships, as in cash or product giveaways, or employee volunteer time.

None of this applies to Facebook. Its Organ Donor program is on another CSR plane.

By providing a link on the site that connects organ donors to online donor registries, it has simply provided a “public good” by doing what it does best – connect – in this case, organ donors who would not have had a chance to come forth in such a public way or who had not thought of registering in the first place, with organizations that can offer hope to the 114,000 waiting…

But as with anything else, it always starts with one person’s mission and goal and in this case it was Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, who teamed up with an old friend Andrew Cameron, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who alerted her to the dire need for organ donations. Sheryl, made a judgment call and decided to find a way “to fix it.”

Although only an available option in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, still, with its millions of users, Facebook has now turned into a powerful tool to save lives…

Bravo.