Day 16 – A picture of someone who inspires you

This is my friend Roselyn.  She passed away at the age of 23 this past October.  She had cancer and put up a long and courageous fight! Although we were never very close, we shared a lot of experiences and times together.

The Way We Get By

If you haven’t seen this documentary, you need to.

It follows three elderly people as they volunteer welcoming back troops or sending troops off to both Iraq and Afghanistan at Bangor International in Maine.  To me it is amazing that the oldest living generation can still give of themselves but the younger generations can only sit back and talk about the pros and cons of these wars.  I really don’t care what your take is on the wars, this documentary isn’t about that…it’s about the people who have found the importance in giving something to those who give us so much.

Maybe it’s because of the reception or lack there of for our Korea and Vietnam vets that the generation who fought in Korea and Vietnam aren’t the ones out there helping welcome the troops home or being the last civilian that some of them see for a year or so…

Pearl Harbor Day

Ohio State connections to Pearl Harbor

Ever wonder why four dorms at Ohio State are named…Halloran, Scott, Blackburn, and Haverfield?

They are named for the four Ohio State graduates who were killed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 68 years ago today.

-Jim Haverfield had joined the Navy not long after graduating from Ohio State University in 1939. Commissioned an ensign, he was assigned to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. His body yet resides within the wreckage of that sunken battleship after the Japanese attack 68 years ago today.

-Ensign William I. Halloran, a 1938 OSU journalism graduate was, like Haverfield, an officer aboard the USS Arizona who went down with the ship.

-John T. “Jack” Blackburn, who graduated from Columbus North High School and attended OSU, was lost when the USS Utah went down.

-Robert R. Scott, another former OSU student, became the university’s first recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery he displayed during the Dec. 7 attack. Scott’s below-decks battle station aboard the USS California began flooding not long after the battleship was hit, though Scott refused to abandon the compressor he was running and on which the guns topside relied. “This is my station and I will stay and give them air as long as the guns are going,” Scott is reported to have said before ultimately drowning during the attack.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/12/07/PEARL_HARBOR.ART_ART_12-07-09_A1_C8FTR6K.html?sid=101

146 years ago…

Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address…

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, concieved in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Col. Lewis Millett

Colonel Millett was an Army veteran of three wars who received the Medal of Honor for leading a rare bayonet charge up a hill in Korea.

// http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/us/19millett.html

 

Veteran’s Day

Veterans Day is the anniversary of the symbolic end of World War I on November 11, 1918. The date was declared a national holiday in many allied nations to help remember those lost during the war. The exception is Italy, which celebrates the holiday on November 4 for the Armistice of Villa Giusti. The holiday is known as Armistice Day in many nations around the world.

After WWII, the holiday was changed to Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth of Nations. Poland also changed the holiday to National Day and called the Polish Independence Day. In Belgium, the day is known as the Day of Peace.

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.  ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Thanks to the greatest generation and the ones still fighting for our nation
I’ve never had to kill for my way of life

If it wasn’t for the good lord and the man
there wouldn’t be a breath of freedom in this land
and I see people on my T.V. taking shots at uncle Sam
I hope they always remember why they can
cause we’d all be speakin’ German livin’ under flag of Japan
if it wasn’t for the good lord and the man

-The Good Lord and The Man- John Rich

Fort Hood

Thinking of the families and friends of those stationed at Ft. Hood and those involved with yesterday’s shooting.

This lady is a HERO in every sense of the word!

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/fort-hood-officer-kimberly-munley-hailed-massacre-hero/Story?id=9014951&page=2

USS New York

The USS New York, carrying 7.5 tons of World Trade Center steel in her bow arrived in New York today.  She stopped near Ground Zero and rendered a 21-gun salute from her deck guns. She will be commissioned into service on Saturday. Approximately 13% of her crew is from the state of New York.

Two sister ships will carry names which are also in honor of those killed on 9/11/2001. The USS Arlington (in memory of those killed in the Pentagon attack) and the USS Somerset (in honor of those killed on United 93). The Arlington is scheduled for delivery in 2009 and the commissioning in 2010.  The Somerset will follow with delivery in 2010 and commissioning in 2011.

 

Game One National Anthem

Keni Thomas a former Army Ranger, fought in the battle which is chronicled in the book and movie Black Hawk Down.

He did an awesome job!

And while we are one the subject of it, I wonder why no one has said ONE thing about College Gameday being on the air and talking during the National Anthem before the Red River Rivalry….