Here at the USVAA, every day is Veterans Day. I know, I know. It sounds like a slogan or a platitude. If we had a nickel for every time someone trotted it out, wed have no problem bringing you many, many more great programs every year. But please bear with me for a minute. I promise I am going somewhere with this. During my years with the USVAA, Ive had the great fortune of meeting many amazing veterans; starting with our dedicated and tireless Executive Director, Keith Jeffreys. There is John DiFusco, who has done so much to bring understanding (as much as one can without having been there) to the wider public of what it was really like for American soldiers in Vietnam. Im proud to have had the chance to contribute to our recent productions of his plays. There is also Tucker Smallwood, another Vietnam veteran who never hesitates to use his place in the publics eye to highlight Veterans issues. His bravery in sharing his very personal story of what the aftermath of war has been like for him never ceases to amaze me. I was also fortunate to have had the chance to meet William Lansford before he passed away. A veteran of WW2 (A Marine Raider on Guadalcanal, Bouganville and Iwo Jima) and a successful screenwriter and author, he set one of the early examples of a veteran building a successful career in the arts. I could go on and on down a long list. There are many veterans with amazing stories to tell among our members, supporters and friends. As I tell people when they ask, I am not a veteran, I just work here. So even though I think about veterans and veterans issues every day, today is still a little different. Looking at the Facebook posts by my friends for the last few days, I see reminiscing about veterans in their families. The first veteran I knew was my great-grandfather. The men in his unit (and later on, pretty much everyone else who knew him) called him Papa Joe. This isnt a surprise. When he enlisted for World War 2, he was much older than most, and ended up being a good fifteen to twenty years older than the others in his unit. He ended up on New Guinea. While I know now that this was one of the more fiercely contested battlefields in the Pacific, he rarely talked about it that way. It was usually funny anecdotes about plenty of lobsters, too much tropical fruit and hilarious things that would happen when the air raid siren sounded (he always cooked in someone elses helmet- cue pasta sauce on head visual). He wasnt very tall, but he had a lot of nerve. Though he didnt brag about it, I know he was proud of his Army service - for the rest of his life, he always ate with his US Army spoon. So here is to you, Papa Joe, and all the other veterans of wars past and present. May you never be forgotten and may your stories always be heard by receptive ears. Happy Veterans Day and thank you for your service. Emil Petrinic Director of Special Projects USVAA
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 16:46:34 +0000
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