with gratitude to our veterans

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

-- Alexander Hamilton 

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

-- Douglas MacArthur

Blair and I spent this morning at the Jamaica Estates gatehouse at Midland Parkway and Hillside Avenue, attending a modest Veteran's Day service. While the gatehouse looks like nothing more than a decoration marking the entrance to the neighborhood, it's actually a memorial to the ten JE residents who lost their lives fighting for the US in World War II.*

The highlight of the ceremony was when students at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Academy read brief bios of the ten soldiers. Their bios were the culmination of an extra-curricular project to research the lost ten. For the record, their names were:

• John Adikes, Jr.
• Sigmund Gillmore
• Kenneth S. Kinnes
• John B. Lovely
• Paul W. Olson
• Norman H. Puff
• Peter P. Renzo
• Joseph A. Scheibel
• Donald J. Schneider

Words can't do justice to the sacrifices these kids and their families made.

But it's important to remember -- and this was Veteran's Day (as opposed to Memorial Day) afterall -- the Veterans among us. Many are wounded, and the wounds aren't always visible. But, wounded or not, these are people who willingly signed up to put their lives on the line to defend our freedom. Again, words can't do justice, but it's important to remember what they did for all of us.

*The gatehouse was originally a gatehouse, when JE was a gated community. But at some point it was turned into the memorial it is today. I don't know when that happened, but I can say that it was decades ago; I grew up in the neighborhood, and can tell you that it was a memorial when I was a kid. I remember asking my father why there was a memorial for JE dead from World War II but not one for World War I. He explained that there was no Jamaica Estates until after World War I. Left unanswered was why there was no memorial for the Korean or Viet Nam wars.