Veteran's Day - 2009

Veteran’s Day
November 11, 2009

We have visible memorials standing through out this country as well as many countries abroad, honoring those who have served and paid the ultimate price for our freedom. We can pick a veteran out of a crowd of people when they wear a certain hat, a pin or a uniform on days like Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day and Fourth of July, but would we be able to identify a veteran at other times?

Some veterans carry the obvious signs of their service – a missing limb, a deep jagged scar or that certain look in their eyes. So, who is a veteran?

He’s my dad that stormed Omaha Beach at 19 years of age. He’s my uncle that flew 52 successful missions as an Air Force pilot over Italy. She’s my daughter-in-law that served in Dessert Storm, slept on the ground and yes, ate a bug or two. She’s my best friend who served 22 years in the Air Force before retiring but continues to serve as a leader in Soldiers Angels. She’s my niece who decided to join the Army Reserves and after weeks of being told she’d never make it through, graduated at the top of her class. Other veterans carry their evidence inside of them with pins holding a bone together, shrapnel in a leg or possibly a greater kind of inner steel – their heart and soul forged together in the hell of adversity.

It’s impossible to know who is a veteran just by looking at the outside. Maybe it’s the family doctor or nurse you see in the office that saved countless lives in Viet Nam; the older person who bags groceries aggravatingly slow but helped free a Nazi Death Camp. He’s the homeless person living on that street corner; a POW who left as the person you knew but came back someone you didn’t … or not at all. They are the anonymous heroes that lie in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers that forever will represent and preserve the memory of all those anonymous heroes who died unrecognized on the battlefields or in the darkness of the deep oceans. He’s the drill instructor that never saw combat but has turned “couch potatoes” and gang members into the strongest Marines and taught them to watch each other’s backs. A veteran is an ordinary but yet extraordinary individual who has offered his best years in the service of his country and sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrificed theirs. They are the greatest testimony to the greatest nation ever known.

Father Denis O’Brien sums up a veteran so very well:

“It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gave us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protestor to burn the flag.”

Thanks to all of our veterans who have served this great nation and may God bless and protect all of you and continue to give you the strength and courage needed to keep us all safe and free.

Remembering D-Day 65 Years Later

The Greatest Generation ... and what a generation they all are! Friday evening, June 5th, flipping through the television channels trying to find something decent to watch, I came across the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan". Like many times before I decided to watch it, trying to imagine my Dad 65 years later, walking across the green grass of the American cemetery in Normandy, France like "Ryan" did in the movie. I wondered what Dad would have thought today looking out into the calm of the English Channel at 85 years of age. Would he still see the burning LCI 92 he was on that never made it in ... his comrades laying on Omaha dead, wounded and screaming out for help ... the clear waters of the Channel today instead of the bloody waters he witnessed at 19. Would he feel peace today as opposed to hatred and war ... smell clean air over smoke, fire and death. These questions and more were racing through my mind as I watched the beginning of this movie. For now, my questions will remain unanswered because he has been gone for over 7 years now but my instincts tell me that it would all come flooding back to him as it did to those veterans who returned to Normandy for the 65th anniversary of D-Day.


Today I sit in deep thought as I review in my mind the "celebrations" seen on the news this past Saturday, June 6th. Seeing the raw emotions on the faces of those veterans that made the journey back to Omaha Beach... listening to their stories as tears streamed down their faces... watching them point to the exact spot on the beach in which they came ashore was overwhelming to say the least. Seeing these frail men today standing tall, or in some cases sitting, saluting our American flag with the same courage, admiration and love of country they had 65 years ago.. their convictions still just as strong today, was amazing to watch. I am in awe of the legacy the "Greatest Generation" has left us and am proud to be the daughter of one of it's "members". Just as my Dad made a commitment to honor, serve and protect this great country of ours, I vow to keep his memory alive for my children and grand children - they will always know the veteran side of Grandpa! As for my Dad .. my hero ~I will always miss him but he lives on within me in what I do, how I treat others, how I face life's challenges and being one of the co-founders of Heavens Heroes as we support today's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or where ever they happen to be deployed--it's the right thing to do and I know Dad would be proud of the work we do.

God bless our veterans... past, present and future!