Hanging around my youngest kid, Alex, is a bit like living with a red-headed history recording. He watches the Military History Channel more than Spongebob, The Regular Show and MAD TV combined. So, when he realized that today was D-Day, he immediately wanted to know when The Longest Day would be on because he could say John Wayne as clearly as he could say Mama when he was but a small lad of 1 year and that one ranks up there as one of his favorites. You gotta love a kid who preferred In Harm’s Way to Thomas The Tank Engine.
Now that he is 11 and into karate, hockey, music and other “cool” middle school stuff, he still takes time to stop and say, “Thank you sir for your service,” any time he sees a veteran with one of those caps on his head. For Alex, the present is very important, but the past is also valuable. To quote him at the Interactive Courage Museum that he and his classmates in Mrs. Kristie Horn’s Grayson Elementary Class created this year in order to study the effects of WWII on the past and the present, “You have to study history, because it would be criminal to repeat the lessons we have already learned. All those people would have died for no reason.”
Because my kid has a passionate heart for all things military-from a mostly human standpoint-we will continue to do stuff like drive through Ft. Knox in the rain to visit the Patton Museum, wait for him to take a minute to thank a Vet and spend all day looking for him at places like the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Pooler, GA. Because, if it were not for kids like him, the impact our past sacrifices have made might just become lost and we would run the risk of repeating an avoidable tragedy. God Bless the Troops…past and present.
FreelanceBeth 