Veterans Day 2018

I have never served in the U.S. military.   In the late sixties, when young men my age were staring the draft in the eye … with horrible images of the Vietnam War staring back at us from our TVs every night … I was working for a defense company that designed equipment for the Navy’s submarines, at that time considered a major deterrent against attack by Russian submarines.   I filed for a deferment with the support of my employer who was willing to state that my work was critical to national security and … four months later … I received a letter stating that my request had been denied.  I was officially draftable.  Recently married and not wanting to spend two years of my life in the jungles of Vietnam, I applied and was accepted to the Air Force Officer Candidate School.  A few days before I was ready to accept my commission, I got a second letter saying my deferment had been granted.

Dad and Veterans Day

In 1942, my father quit high school and joined the Army Air Corps, in spite of having been accepted to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the fine engineering school in Troy, New York. It was a story he repeated many times with regret … I thought I was a big shot, was the only explanation he ever gave.  I know enough about Dad’s father, Arthur, to think that my Dad just needed to get away and that the Army was the quickest out. In a time when going off to war was portrayed as heroic, it probably didn’t seem like a terrible option compared to dealing with his father. My parents were married while he was on leave, then moved to Caspar, Wyoming while he went through basic training. I was apparently conceived there. When Dad was shipped to Europe to serve a maintenance supervisor for

Veterans Day

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Monday 11/12/2012 – Veterans Day