It was Veteran’s Day, and I could not wait to enter my Facebook page. So many of my friends were giving honors to their moms and dads who served their country. I started to have tears in my eyes thinking about both my dad, my step-father Morton E. Wolf.
         Like many of the under twenty years olds that served World War II, my step-dad gave up his college education at the University of Chicago to protect and serve his country. Always having an interest in electronics he was very excited to be in the radar corp. One particular night he and his squad where woken up by the loud sirens at 3:00 am, and told a special plane just landed on the ship and it’s radar needed to be serviced. Being full of yawns and figured it was just another
plane that strayed off course he just performed his radar dance and wished away not knowing that this plane was the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, the first aircraft to drop the first atomic bomb. Mort spent the rest of his life as a proof reader, and after over thirty years of service was called into his boss’s office and let go with no severance pay or benefits. As heartening as it sounds he loved his family and country, I loved him as always wondered being exposed to the atomic bomb might of caused his melanoma death. A true father, husband, uncle, brother, and most of all a beloved veteran that should never be forgotten.
           As I started to read all of the contributions of all the other veterans on my Facebook page, I was saddened to hear one of our greatest fighters of world peace finally left us, Nelson Mandella.
Mr. Mandella spent over two decades in prison, and he was justly rewarded to lead his people of South Africa to  finally have their freedom.
           Finally as I see that life happens in three , I must pay a special thank you to my father-in-law
David Nacino. A father of seven children, served in the Japanese Death March, Bataang. Marching with his fellow soldiers( Filipino and American) only had the leather off his shoes was his main source of nourishment. Thank God he was a to survive and return to tank care of his family.
His story does not end there with a happy ending. His young and beautiful wife died of a heart attack. If this was painful enough, his youngest daughter now my wife was stricken with Polio.
Most men were just leave. My grief stricken father-in-law was determined to make sure that all of his children went to college. A true Veteran of not just serving our country but a committed father.
            I want thank all of veterans for your great sacrifice. Your pains gave me freedom that most people around the world are still fighting for.