Veterans’ Day

Like other men of the Greatest Generation, my dad was an ordinary man who never understood that he did an extraordinary thing.  

After enlisting in the Alabama National Guard, he was sent to Alaska, never before having even been outside Madison County. He slept in a tent surrounded by snow until barracks could be built. He spent three years on Kodiak Island before going to France for another year of service. As a medic, he tended to German prisoners of war as well as Allied soldiers. When he finally returned home, he seldom spoke of the war, preferring to let the memories bury themselves. At the end of his life, he spoke of little else.

Daddy wasn’t an anomaly. He was a poor farm boy from Alabama and an American patriot. His idea of protesting the injustice of Nazi Germany and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was to do what he could to make things right. He was not alone. American Veterans have for decades been the guardians of the world, an often thankless task both at home and abroad.

Veterans have ensured every American’s right to protest, but protest alone and without positive action is futile.  Whether it is refusing to stand for the national anthem or screaming at the sky, protest as a single act accomplishes little. The valor comes in the hard work that renders the protest no longer necessary.

Will today’s protester, upon reaching the end of life, realize that change required donating the millions to a worthwhile cause, working with principled organizations, or joining the military to protect everyone’s rights? Realization followed by regret? Perhaps then would be the time to scream at the sky.