On Friday, November eleventh, the United States will celebrate a very important day: Veterans Day. Though the day might be overlooked by the results of the presidential election, I wanted to make it clear that my family always celebrates this day and prays and thinks about all the people who lost their lives defending this country. Both of my grandfathers are veterans. My grandfather on my father’s side, now passed, had to give up playing minor league baseball to be drafted into World War II. Other great-uncles and close family friends served and protected this wonderful country.
Every year, my mother’s school holds their annual Veterans Day breakfast, where the young students help cook and serve food to any veteran who decides to stop by. My other grandfather still attends and enjoys talking with the students about experiences he went through while serving.
I couldn’t imagine being my grandfather and having to give up professional baseball to head to war. He had to put his entire life on hold, and he had no other choice. I think about the fact that he was younger than my older brother when he stepped into the war zone. There, he endured unsettling situations, things that we can’t even think about. He lost friends. He was scared. Yet he still fought.
Up until he passed away, he would proudly show us his helmet, which my younger brother always liked to put on. We still have his uniform and his medals hang around in my aunt’s house. There are pictures of him in baseball days, just a carefree teenage kid, then pictures of him in his military uniform. It was crazy just how fast his entire life changed.
Those who fight and serve are country deserve to be respected and honored—not just on Veterans Day, but all the time. My family and I are big supporters of the Wounded Warrior Project (my brothers have plenty shirts and shorts with the logo on it). We stand every time the National Anthem is played, our hands covering our hearts, and we remember and think about our grandparents who saw the unthinkable. We think about all people who served and are still serving today, their families, and all of their loved ones.
What those brave people see over there and experience does not even closely equate to celebrities and athletes who just have to knell during the National Anthem every time their feelings are hurt.
You stand for those who lost their lives defending the country you get to live in comfortably. You stand for family members you lost personally. You stand for military personnel that you don’t even know. You stand because the person next to you can’t. You stand because you are in America, where you have things like freedom of speech and the ability to just be . . . free.
God bless all of those serving who are serving our country today, and God bless those who lost their lives defending me and you.
You will never be forgotten.
