“Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt
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My 97 year old dad went on the Honor Flight this month - he can’t stop talking about the trip. [He was annoyed they made all the vets use wheelchairs though, since he walks a mile every day. And everyone was surprised/shocked/(jealous?) that he’s on no medications.]
He got a kick out of meeting Sen. Dole at the WWII Memorial. My dad told him he voted for him, and Sen. Dole said “you should have voted twice!” lol
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I’m the guy in the red shirt. As I walked by the guy in the wheelchair/walker was lightly weeping in front of his comrades name, and he wanted a “rub” of it but had no paper or pencil.
I went up to one of the staff volunteers who stand ready with both and we got him one. You make tight friends in tight places, and some wounds never heal - they just scar over.
Even though I served in the Vietnam war, This is the one that struck me most, the Korean Memorial. Maybe a thousand faces etched in the dark granite with statues of soldiers walking through the evergreens, symbolic of rice paddies. I took this picture of it, But it wasn’t until I was home looking at the picture that I saw it… the reflection of the statues in the foreground.
A beautifully designed Memorial. It raised the hair on my arms… once the artist’s intentions were clear to me, the polished slabs are a mirror - Ghosts in the stone.
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Wow!
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The physical iteration of an artist’s vision sometimes just blow me away. Those reflections are quite an unexpected and quite eery embodiment of what happened then. We drove past this place while in DC, but never stopped.
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that’s amazing - thank you for sharing - gave me chills
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Unlike many memorials the images in the Korean War Memorial are all real soldiers (& the first K9 in a D.C. memorial).
It’s one I always visit at night. The lighting results in almost a moonlit night level of illumination and with just a bit of mist (especially in the fall/winter) there’s no mistaking the field the unit is going through - looks exactly like a rice paddy. And then the ghosts in the wall are looking out while those walking by are flitting through their midst.
I am involved in an organization that raises money for various service & emergency responder charities through an annual 7 month long motorcycle ride - https://www.tourofhonor.com/ - sending riders all over the country to visit memorials to heroes. It doesn’t matter if they’re not famous, just that they stepped in and answered a call for service.
There are an enormous number of stories out there. Take a look at the memorials we’ve sent riders to over the years and you can get a sense of what Americans have done for the world as well as those who stay behind. Some of them are breathtaking, all of them are cause to stop and think of what it means to be the people we are, despite how many of us may act now.
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Good on you Sir, a most worthy effort. 
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My father-in-law fought in the battle of Chosin Reservoir. So scarring we did not know for years that he was one of the few survivors. And his best friend was buried with a medal of honor - he had no idea until he saw him in his coffin. Such different men, such different times, when people did not broadcast everything that happens to the world. Think I prefer that.
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