The changing of the guard is almost complete. We are down to our last World War I veterans world wide. This past January, the last of the Kaiser's army died The World War One vets in my family have been dead for 40 years or more at this point. I feel the sense of loss and sacrifice this year especially. This year is the first that we do not have a surviving World War II vet who fought at the front in the family.

My family has had someone in every major american war from the Civil War on. My great grandfather put in 8 years with the Italian cavalry in WWI. Another Great Grandfather's brother won a Croix de Guerre. My father was in the Army reserve during the Kennedy/Johnson administrations... My Uncle at the Cuban blockade during the missile service.

My regret is that I can only teach about our country's history, not share in defending it. Leave the politics aside, may this country's vets never again hear "Baby Killer" and every other epithet from those turbulent anti war days in the sixties and seventies. I leave you with the quote of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

"Heroism is latent in every human soul....However humble or unknown, they (the veterans) have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all self-denials; privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sicknesses, mutilations, life-long hurts and losses, death itself ? For some great good, dimly seen but dearly held."-- Memorial Day 1828-1914


Happy Memorial Day...