“Recently it dawned on me that most the Dads & uncles I knew growing up were vets of WW2 or Korea. They were shop keepers, carpenters, loggers, doctors, dads.”
Yes,recently it dawned on me too. Thinking back, almost everyone’s Dad & even some mothers were veterans.
It turns out that my high school Civics teacher, who at that time was a Reserve Major, was a 2nd Lt. in the first wave at Normandy. Few knew that. He never said anything about. Nobody even talked about that kind of thing. I only found out
when I read his newspaper obituary.
Some kids might have mentioned their
Dad was Marine somewhere in the South Pacific, or at the Bulge, or countless other strange sounding places. But we didn’t think too much about the significance of those places because everybody’s dad had been overseas somewhere at the time. No big deal then. A big deal to me now.
We owe so much to that generation in the way they raised us, the examples they set & how they did their best to raise us as good citizens.