Storm forces Obama to cancel Memorial Day speech at Illinois cemetery

President Barack Obama canceled planned remarks on Memorial Day at a national cemetery in Illinois.

The president was forced to cancel planned public remarks at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill., because of a lightning storm.

The president will meet instead privately with military families who'd gathered in the Illinois cemetery and who are now gathered on buses.

The torrential downpour resulted in a scene where "flash flood-type pools of water" gathered, and there were "sharp bursts of lightning," according to a pool report.

The president himself made the decision to delay his speech after lightning first struck, according to White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton.

Obama was to tell those gathered that the best way to honor the fallen from America's wars was to remember the rights for which those soldiers had fought and died.

The president's original decision to speak in Elwood was met with some criticism. Obama was vacationing at home in Chicago this weekend, and had opted to let Vice President Joe Biden helm the traditional wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.