All of you that know that Im bonkers about the military and our veterans. I always try to outdo my Veterans Day post from last year, but after thinking about it for a while, I went back to my most basic, most important influence...my grandpa. I remember a study years and years ago where people were asked who their heros were. The study listed all the normal names....Lincoln, Washington, JFK, the astronauts, a pope, MLK, etc.., and at the end, they listed other. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), the other option was used the most. Parents, teachers, a priest, grand parents, cops, and soldiers were peoples actual heros. People have their likes on Facebook....mine include Pat Tillman and Mike Monsoor. With the knowledge that I have about military history from way back when....up until now, its always the individuals that strike me. Tillman, Monsoor, Chesty Puller, E/506th, George Marshall, etc.....they are just single men with unbelievable legacies, but my grandpa....to me, still tops them all....because he was my grandpa. Like so many....I am typical, my grandpa was everything....a mentor, a family member, actually my neighbor, and a hero. I try to imagine what it was like for him....a SeaBee in the Pacific in World War II. I wonder if he was ever scared? I wonder how foreign the Pacific must have been to him? I wonder if he made life long friends? His wife, my grandma, had a brother killed (he was a pilot, but was killed on a transport that was sunk) just north of my grandpa, I wonder if he knew about that happening? I wonder. For this Veterans Day....Im just going to think about my grandpa. Ill think about his smile, his hug, how he showed me how to do so many things, but Ill also wonder about everything he went through in the war......for what he did in the war, I thank him.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 19:42:48 +0000
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