Just a memory of those veterans from the Greatest Generation....

As a kid (I'm in my early 60's now), my dad would always go to the Memorial Day service held at our local cemetery. Dad enlisted in the US Navy as soon as he could. He was in the Civilian Conservation Corp as a teenager in the mid 1930's. That took from Pittsburgh, PA out to the Painted Desert in Arizona (Painted Desert Inn project ). When he turned of age, he enlisted prior to the invasion of Poland in 1939. He was on a shakedown cruise of the USS St. Louis in the Caribbean when that occurred. When Pearl Harbor occurred, he was on shore leave in San Francisco and missed his ship when it pulled out, later catching it in Southern California. He had been at Pearl for several months just before. He physically survived the war but I realized how it changed him emotionally. He was demobilized within 20 days of the second atomic bombing at Nagasaki, in August 1945, so he was in for the full duration of WWII.

Skipping forward 20 years from then, I was 8 or so. He made it a point to always attend the Memorial Day service and took me where I could see my tough Dad visibly weeping for his fallen friends and companions. I still make an effort to attend a service. Now its me with tears in my eyes, both for those who made the sacrifice and for my Dad, who I still miss terribly even though he's been gone over twenty years. Rest in peace, "Boats."