Veterans Day

This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago to mark Veterans Day. Enjoy.

When I think of veterans, I think of guys like John Hoover.

Mr. Hoover was one of my first bosses; an elderly man who oversaw the summer youth work program in the town where I lived. He couldn’t hear too well because of mortar rounds he shot at the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

Or I think of my father-inlaw, Dave Hesse, who left his family while the Air Force sent him to Vietnam.

But who I really think of, though, is Mike McKinney. I interviewed Mr. McKinney several years ago when the movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out. He knew a thing or two about D-Day; he was there. As a matter of fact he was the second man on Omaha beach that day.

These men, and many others I’ve encountered throughout my life are veterans. Which makes it kind of embarrassing to me when someone thanks me for my own military service. I’ve never felt that my name should be mentioned in the same breath with those who have gone off to fight in wars and conflicts. My time in service came during Ronald Reagan’s largest peacetime military buildup. I was a Cold Warrior and no one so much as called me bad names, let alone shot at me.

The Air Force gave me three square meals a day for 4½ years, taught me a trade and threw a little money at me for an education. The military exposed me to people I would have never met and sent me to a country — Germany — that I would have never visited. After I got out, my military service made me eligible for a home mortgage. I have a hard time thinking that anyone, especially a regular taxpayer, owes me anything.

Me? A veteran? It doesn’t make sense.

But sometimes it takes a child to make us realize our follies.

For the past several years, Route 66 Elementary School has staged a Veterans Day celebration. I’ve managed to avoid the event in past years — like I said, it wasn’t something I felt I deserved. My kids wouldn’t let it go this year. They especially wanted to make sure that I stood up with all the other Air Force veterans.

I know the feeling of feeling pride for the accomplishments of a child of mine. I’ve had the pleasure of feeling the pride from a parent. But never had I encountered the pride a child feels for a parent. It was an odd and humbling feeling. Perhaps it was something that I had never taken the time to contemplate.

But there they were, my sons, showing me how proud they were to have had a father who once served in the U.S. Air Force. They both know — I’ve told them myself — that I sacrificed very little. The people we need to honor on Veterans Day are men like John Hoover, Dave Hesse and Mike McKinney, I tell them. And they know.

I’ve heard older generations talk about the youth and how they don’t understand the sacrifices veterans have made. Nothing could be further from the truth. These kids, especially the ones at Route 66, understand perfectly the freedoms they enjoy and who made it possible. You can credit their teachers and their parents.

If you don’t believe me, just show up next year for the school’s Veterans Day assembly and listen to hundreds of small voices sing and recite poems. If it doesn’t move you, then you don’t appreciate the sacrifice veterans have made for this country.

Myself included.