![\"\"](\"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Dad.jpg\" "\\"Dad\\"")
<\/a>Of course it is supposed to be about remembering those who died on the battlefield.\u00a0 People who died in military service.\u00a0 People who risked and gave their life for something more than the ordinary, mundane, and simple things of life that most of us — including me! — spend our time obsessing with every day.<\/p>\nIt is supposed to be a day to remember that there were people in our history — people in our lives — that gave up everything to protect a friend, fight someone’s battle, defend an idea.\u00a0 We need to remember those people.\u00a0 Not just because they deserve it.\u00a0 But because we can learn from them.<\/p>\n
This Memorial Day I think of my father.\u00a0 He didn’t die on the battlefield.\u00a0 If he had I wouldn’t be alive to write this.\u00a0 But he gave up a lot for me, my family, and the county he loved.\u00a0 He survived Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 He survived Midway.\u00a0 He made it through the battle of the Philippines.\u00a0\u00a0 And after WWII,\u00a0 he made it through the Korean War.\u00a0 He didn’t die in combat although he easily could have.\u00a0 He was just lucky.<\/p>\n
Today we should think about those whose luck ran out; whose children we never born; whose life and legacies ended in service to their country.<\/p>\n
So spend a few minutes today to remember all those who decided to serve a greater cause to defend — as best they could — their country.\u00a0 And especially those who forfeited their life in service to us all.<\/p>\n Say thank you.\u00a0 And hope that we can develop the same spirit within us to pass down to the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is Memorial Day.\u00a0 Most people know it as the beginning of summer.\u00a0 The day that marks the end of semester seasons and the beginning of\u00a0 trips, vacations, heat, humidity, and summer storms.\u00a0 It is Rolling Thunder, it is Joe and Kathy’s clambake, it is an extra day to get caught up on laundry and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,71],"tags":[73,69,160,161,72],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>I took a moment this morning to read the post I submitted about my father in the Pearl Harbor Survivors Project<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 I looked at an 18-year-old who quit high school to enlist as a soldier.\u00a0 I read (again) the simple, small card that was the only thing he could send his mom after surviving the attack on December 7th.\u00a0 And I reread the letter he wrote five days later.\u00a0\u00a0 “They started this war and we’re going to finish it!<\/strong><\/em>”\u00a0 That was Dad, pure and simple.\u00a0 Well, we did.\u00a0 Dad survived.\u00a0 But a half million of his fellow military service members did not.<\/p>\n