I am in the lucky generation; I am the daughter of those who were young during the Depression and in early adulthood in WWII. My grandmother made my mother a winter coat out of an older one, sprucing it up so it looked nice. When Roosevelt spoke the day after Pearl Harbor, she listened to it over the public address system in the school auditorium. My father went in the service in 1942 and came back to Indiana in late 1945 and was discharged at Fort Benjamin Harrison.

He was in the signal corps and said he never was a “real soldier”. He’s gone now. His hair was white and he had become frail.

I look at these pictures of old men and the pictures of young men in combat and realize they are the same. I feel for them; I feel for me. Something so important, something that reaches so deeply into your soul and it passes in a lifetime. Maybe that is the real reason they made stone and sculptors – because at least there is something to touch, something as strong as they were.

(Well, okay, bronze is good as well.)

A musical and pictorial tribute and thank you in in album form on the Internet now. My husband sent it to me and I send it on to you.