I need to write a commemorative speech for my speech class and I have never seen or heard a commemorative speech. Please Help!!! I was hopeing to get...

As you have
figured out, a commemorative speech honors a person or event. It is often given on the
anniversary of the event (such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address speech) or sometimes at an event
held to honor a person. In your case, your speech must commemorate someone that was once in your
life, but no longer is, and you say that you don't have such a person in your life. So, how
about choosing to write about some famous person that has died. Even though you may not have
known this person personally, you can still commemorate him or her for the contribution he or
she made to society. For example, in 2009, Edward Kennedy died. You could write a speech
commemorating his contributions to American society. If you do some research, you can find out
about these contributions and write a pretty powerful speech, I would imagine.

In 2008, Michael DeBakey died. He was a pioneering cardiovascular surgeon that made
huge contributions to heart surgery. You could write about him. Or, you could go back further in
time and choose a famous person that you admire and write a commemorative speech about that
person.

If you search online for "people who died in ____" and plug
in a year, you will find lists of people that died in any given year. Perhaps someone in that
list is one that you admired, and you will have your subject. Perhaps you admire a famous
musician or actor who has died. What would you do if you could spend one last day with that
person?

Next, you can write about what one thing you would do with this
person if you could bring him or her back to life for one more day. Was there something in the
person's life that was left unfinished when they died? Perhaps this will
help.