Thanks, Dad...

...for your military service to our country during WWII.

Thank you for fearlessly

flying long tedious hours "old school" style...

anxiously awaiting

the next circling signal ship stationed below

to help set your course

through the vast and lonely airspace of the Pacific theater.

Thank you

for selflessly risking life and limb and aircraft...

on a seemingly endless basis. 

Thank you for safely completing

repeated

take offs and landings on exotic foreign shores.

Thank you, too,

for skillfully and accurately negotiating those newly made

threadlike coral runways of

distant, unknown, microscopic atolls...

the names of which would soon become emblazoned

in the pages of history.

Thank you for all these things

which brought you home safely...to mom

and,

eventually, in short order to me.

Your service

not only

evacuated the sick and wounded,

returned loved ones home.

and

provided supplies needed for the war effort...

it also 

helped make our world a safer place...and my future brighter.

The freedoms I enjoy today

come from your unselfishness and love of country. 

Special thanks to you, too, mom,

as a young wife,

for supporting your true love...and keeping the

home fires burning here stateside.

I love you both.
 



"As we express our gratitude,

we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words,

but to live by them."

~John Fitzgerald Kennedy