GUEST BLOGGER: VETERANS DAY WITH HIS GRANDSON, BY DICK KANE

This Veterans Day was more meaningful to me than any I have experienced in recent years.  It became so because of a bunch of 5th graders and their participation in a program at their Catholic Church after the morning Mass.  I got there because my 5th grade grandson called me and ask that I come as a veteran to the Mass about 15 miles away.  I am not sure of my veteran qualifications as no one ever shot at me the 2 years I was an enlisted man.

Anyway, I arrived at the church, dutifully, on time and just happened to see my grandson who was hustling off to be an altar server and was told to set in the front row.  In the front row were a Navy Captain, another individual and I.  Soon to arrive and sit next to me was a Marine Colonel.  The Marine Colonel soon excused himself and moved to the row behind us so that he could to sit with his son a Marine Lieutenant.  (First WOW)  Others arrived in uniform as well, and as each of us came forward, two young ladies presented us with lapel pins with crossed American flags.  Each of the students also wore these pins.

The parish pastor conducted the Mass itself and students were lectors, presenters of prayers of the faithful, and altar servers.  The Mass was both to celebrate the 1st year that the church had been opened and Veterans Day.  I suspect you have to be Catholic to appreciate it, but it was a beautiful Mass.

After Mass, the congregation was asked to be seated.  A Boy Scout came to the podium and set up two flag stands then ordering his Color Guard to post the flags.   All stood as the flags were posted (American and Papal) and were seated after the posting.  A group of 15 students (sharply dressed in their uniforms with ties on the young men) came forward and one after another thanked their parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, and in one case great-grandparents, for their service to the country.  These presentations were crisp and well detailed with the presenters taking great pride in the achievements of their families. 

Towards the end of these presentations, a young lady that brought tears to my eyes related that her grandparents were Polish Jews and in a German concentration camp towards the end of WWII and placed in a death march to cover evidence of the atrocities of the camp.  They had nothing to eat except grass and kept going on the march because they could hear the American troops battling the Germans not far off, and the American troops did recover them before they died.  Her thanks was to all of the American veterans for saving her grandparents and thus giving her the opportunity be here (another WOW!)

The flags were removed, all of the participants in the Mass and ceremony came to the front and God Bless America was sung. We were invited to the school for a reception afterwards, put on by the students, and saw all of the posters and hangings that the classes had put together to commemorate Veterans Day.

I think these students really developed a flavor of the sacrifice of our veterans and what it could and should mean to them to be an American. I had to share this with your readers.  I believe this is a rare occasion for 5th graders in today’s America but it should not be.