Everett Day
It was exactly one hundred years ago. My mother recalled the day well. On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at eleven o’clock, in 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies and the Great War ended. Millions of people had died but now, the world could begin to recover and, perhaps life could at last return to normal. It was a hope and a goal. The dads, fathers, brothers, sons and daughters could come home.
My dad’s brother, Everett Day served in the Great War, World War I. It seems so long ago now and the world was a much different place. Never again would everything return to the way it had been. Things had changed. A certain innocence had been lost.
That first cataclysmic war had not been the end to all wars after all. If only it had! In 1954, President Eisenhower signed a proclamation declaring that Armistice Day would now be known as Veterans’ Day, honoring all the men and women who served in all the conflicts, including World War II and Korea. Since then, there has been Viet Nam and the other wars that have been mostly undeclared, but in which men and women have died in service to their country.
Thurman Day
No veterans of World War I are left and only a few from World War II. But, there are still men and women who served in Korea and Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and wherever the government has sent them. My thanks go out to members of my own family: Everett Day, Thurman, Tracy, Richard, and Clint Day, Ray Cartwright, Wesley Manos.
Clinton Lee Day
The best way we can honor our service men and women is to keep a careful watch on freedom–guard it well, realize what it means, and be ever watchful against encroachments upon it. We truly live in the land of the free and the home of the brave because of them. I’m thankful.
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