Veterans Day

A Veteran – whether active duty, retired, National Guard or Reserve, is someone who, at one point, in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America” for an amount of “up to and including my life.”  That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.   -  Author Unknown.

My father was a veteran of three wars.  He was proud of being a Marine and serving his country.  And this day, Veteran’s Day, was also his birthday.  He would have been 85 years old today.

He was born in New Hampshire in 1924 and joined the U.S. Marine Corp when he was 17, just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  He spent four years fighting in the Pacific, island to island.  After the war, he got out of the military for two years, but decided to rejoin.  He served in the Marine Corps for 30 years, seeing action in Korea and Vietnam.  He died April 10, 1976.

The following are pages that I have scrapped for my Dad. 

My father was not the only one in the family to be a Veteran.  I met my future husband right after he came back from Vietnam.  He was also a Marine.  He was one of three brothers who also served in the military during the Vietnam era.  And yes, I did a page on each of them too.  This is Bob’s page.

This page is Bob’s older brother Jack.  Jack died on Sep 1, 2002, from a neurological disease that quite possibly was a result from his tour of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war.

Bob’s younger brother Bill served in the Navy.  He was fortunate enough not to have served in Vietnam, but he was in the Navy at that time.

And of course, there are my children.  My son Travis joined the Army in 1996 and was part of the 82nd Airborne.  (He just loved jumping out of planes).  Later, after he had been out of the Army for a little while, he joined the Texas National Guard.  He has already served one tour in Iraq and is getting ready to deploy to Iraq again.  Here is the page I did for Travis.

My older daughter Dana also joined the Army about the same time as her brother.  She went to the Language Institute in Monterrey and then served as an analyst at Ft. Meade.  Here is her page.

Veteran’s Day takes on a special meaning to our family.  We have had members of our family serve in every war that America has participated in since the Revolutionary War.  Here is a page I scrapped that depicts that lineage, starting with my son.

A lot of genealogy research has gone into the preparation of this particular page.  I have copies of military papers, pension papers, land bounty records, etc. that authenticate this information.  As I get to each of the various ancestors, I will be sharing them on this blog.  Thanks for looking and come back soon.