Thinking of my father this Memorial Day weekend.
He grew up in the Depression.He volunteered for the Navy in April 1942. He told me once he was watching a baseball game and couldn't stand the thought of not serving. He signed up the next day. He was on a ship in the South Pacific for a year. Then he was one of three selected out of 1000 sailors to be sent to officers school in the V12 program. After the war he served in the Reserves. Then he was called on again to serve on active duty for the duration of the Korean War.
He stayed in the Reserves and eventually retired as a reserve officer.
He loved the Navy. All his life he would say: "There's a right way. There's a wrong way. And there's the Navy way."
In the later years of his life he reconnected with some he served with during the Korean War through a retired officers association. He never missed a reunion of his WW II ship, the USS Wharton. I drove him to his last one in Asheville, NC.
President Roosevelt was thinking of my father when in 1936 he said: "To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. I believe that this generation has a Rendezvous with Destiny."