My dad would have been

[Joanne Vergin]

85 today. I really miss him. He was a WWII vet. Navy.
THank you to all who have served and continue to serve.

[Judy McDonald]

My dad will be 88 in October. He is also a veteran of WW II, as most men his age I guess. He was an army medic, spent the last 7-8 months of the war in a German POW camp --Stalag IV-B. Like many of that era, he was a self-made, unschooled man who professed a belief in God as creator, but developed a cynicism for religion. My parents were divorced when I was about 12 and I didn't see my dad again for over 30 years! I thank God for the opportunity to locate him and travel across the country to renew a fragile relationship. He is still in pretty good health. I pray he will merely call out the name of Jesus and know true peace in his heart.

[Peggy Gray]

I've been thinking of my Dad, also. He would have been 90 this fall, and was on two different aircraft carriers during WWII.

[Jim Franklin]

My five brothers are all gone now. The oldest received a presidential deferment because as Superintendent of the University of Idaho Experimental Station at Parma, ID the university president wrote a letter to President Roosevelt assuring him that my brother was more valuable providing food for the troops than carrying a rifle. The second oldest was so afflicted with asthma that he got a deferrment but spent the war years as civilian administrator of Fairchild Air Corps Base in Spokane, WA. The middle of the brothers became a Navy medic assigned to a Marine Batallion in some of the hottest amphibious landings in the South Pacific and his emotions were deeply affected by his experiences. The fourth of the brothers, under Gen. Patton, chased Rommel across North Africa, made landings on Sicily and Anzio (the landing that had the highest casualty rate of WWII with 80% killed or wounded) but made it up the boot of Italy and was killed in Eastern France near the German border Oct. 4, 1944. The youngest brother was a Navy medic ambulance driver assigned to Aiea Hospital in Hawaii. All of these concerns weighed so heavily on my dad that it would not be hard to consider him a casualty of the war as well.