Veterans Day: Jack Kelly

Some of my thoughts for this Veterans Day weekend.

I was born in 1932 and thus was exempt from personal involvement in the fighting of WWII.

I came from a small community with a population of about 3000 and a rural county with about 6000 citizens. This county lost forty-seven young men and one woman in the fighting. All were known to everyone who lived in this county. We mourned those lost and gave support to their families.

My memories are vivid about the return home by those who had served. They entered this war after having experienced the Great Depression.

That plus the war experience molded them into the adults I grew up with in the 1950’s and beyond.

Most of them are now gone and what has been substantially lost is their attitudesabout life, its duties and its responsibilities.

These were tough no-nonsense people who valued personal responsibility, hard work and respect for others and their property.

When you shook hands with them you knew you were shaking hands with someone who had endured and accomplished much, but with the attitude that this was what they were supposed to do.

They were indeed, as Tom Brokaw wrote, THE GREATEST GENERATION.

Let us remember them and that time in the 1950’s when America experienced the peace and prosperity they created.


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