Remember to give Thanks to all that has served our Country Past and Present. Enjoy your friends, family and food this Weekend. I personally thank Michael for his services and any of you other guys who may have served.
...thanx Pops...thank you for the nurturing of my youth and thank you for your services to our country.
Being Memorial Day as opposed to veterans Day I still have the old school practice of those who served and did not make it back. Men and Women who put what ever on the back burner, were called to serve and did not come back. I also remember participating at either flag folding firing squad, or pallbearer duties for those who had passed on active duty service. Passing an American Flag folded like a Revolutionary Soldiers Hat is a tradition but to have to pass it to the next of kin at a ceremony is a bit heartbreaking. That being said I wish all who celebrate Memorial Day do so in a manner they feel their best but think of those who gave all to give us what we have today. It may not be perfect but its the best damn country on the planet.
...at the funeral we were fortunate enough to have a full military honor guard and to watch the precision with which they folded the flag was indeed heartbreaking...I was OK till they handed the flag to Mom...I lost it.
My father wanted an at sea burial. I took his ashes to Jacksonville. He served on tin cans and that is what took him out to sea. They videoed the whole funeral detail, returned the firing squad rounds and flag to my mother. Well done for being on a ship that looked like it was encountering some turbulence out there.
....wow, what are the odds?...my Dads ashes are also in Jax (in the mouth of the St. Johns River, near the jetties)... If you take the Mayport ferry to the other side of the river you're at Ft George Island where Mom and Dad were born an were also next door neighbors as youngsters and back then they hated each other...when Dad enlisted and finished boot camp he came home for a week and asked Mom to marry him...and the rest, as they say, is history. ...Spent most of my Summers of my childhood roaming all over Ft George when Dad was on leave...fishing, crabbing, digging clams, raking oysters catching fiddlers and selling them for bait...swimming naked in Shad Creek and Sisters Creek...playing at the dunes and at the jetties...shhhh, good times. ...till go back every now and then and spend the day at Huguenot Park...but needless to say, it's grown up with houses everywhere...nothing like it was when I was a kid.
When filling out paperwork for transfer of my fathers cremains I saw the Saratoga out in the water. My father served on the Forrestal home port in Norfolk, the Sara washome ported in Mayport. Occasionally Officers & Chiefs from either ship would perform "Courtesy Inspections" on the other. When telling the Officer in Charge about that he said "that must have been a while back and I said yeah about 30 years ago.. The Officer was a recently promoted JG and I gave him a synopsis of my dads Service. Pearl Harbor Survivor, Made Midway and Coral Sea WWII and Korean Service. I said he survived all that and was taken out by cancer. Probably caused by his rate (Boiler Tech) and and below deck service especially with the coal fired tin cans of the Forties. The old mans terminal assignment was pushing Boots in San Diego with over twenty years of sea service prior. Quite a story I gave that JG but it let him know that the Navy was not a job it was a way of life that served this country well.
...holy crap...my Dad also served on the Saratoga (mid & late 60's), and by then it was an older carrier and was prone to mechanical problems, and I remember him calling it "the sorry Sara"... the Forrestal too, before the big explosion. We were also stationed in San Diego, as well as Key West, Memphis twice, Bermuda, Mayport, Sanford, and Albany, Ga.
In memoriam of numerous Uncles, countless older cousins, from Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal; and the European Theater. To Korea's dehabilitating conditions, to the horrid jungles of Nam; with countless family members who never came back, and some who came back long before anyone knew what PTSD was. To a quit a few Cousins and Unlce's, who drank themselves to death, one drunk enough to play chicken with a Train....all good men....!!! To all the Urban Soldiers of Wars, in and on our Nation's streets, the Vets and Soldiers of Urban Wars who unlike servicemen, rarely if ever get there rewards or public support, to my Brother a young Sheriff Deputy who passed of a fatal heart attack at 37yrs and 1 week; and all the other Urban Officer's who've been slain in vain, doing their jobs and duties, "to protect and serve"... To my own Dad, and many many men, most WWII Vets or other VFW's, who produced the flying machines from the P-51s, F-82's, X-B70's, X-15's, Flying Bathtubs to Saturn Rocket Experiments, the B1-B's, F-4's, F-100's, F-117A's, F-5's, F-104's, F-20's, F-18's, F-16's, U2's, SR-71's, B-52's, to B-2's and the fleets of the OV-0070A's....To those men who designed, built and delivered those instruments or toys of war, and the men who gallanty used those weapons.... Hat's off- in Memoriam...
