Veterans Day

This coming Tuesday is Veterans Day. It is celebrated every November 11^th to honor all our military veterans, past and present. It started as the celebration of the end of WW1. At that time in 1919, it was called Armistice Day. It became Veterans Day in 1954. The reason it doesn’t have an apostrophe is because it doesn’t belong to veterans, it honors them. Many of my extended family members are military veterans. My Dad and his brother server in the Korean War. My grandfather was in the Battle of the Bulge in WW2. Several other uncles served in various branches. My wife’s father was an Air Force mechanic at Colorado Springs.

Growing up in a small town, many of the special days like veterans Day were celebrated with barbeques & parades. It could have been because we had nothing better to do, but I like to think it was because we loved our country. I especially love the horses, the flags, and the marching bands. I had always wondered why the horses were last; they always made me wait. Then my dad explained about the cleanup problem. I guess there is nothing dignified about marching through that.

My all-time marching band number has to be the Stars and Stripes Forever. I love all the music of John Philip Souza, but the that one is special. It just seems to summarize American patriotism. So much so, that it was adopted, by act of Congress, as the national march of the United States in 1987. Many people are not aware the it also has lyrics. The last part, you know the one that is sometimes sung, “be kind to your web footed friends” (ya, thanks mom and the USO) has these words:

“Hurrah for the flag of the free!

May it wave as our standard forever,

The gem of the land and the sea,

The banner of the right.

Let tyrants remember the day

When our fathers with mighty endeavor

Proclaimed as they marched to the fray

That by their might and by their right

It waves forever.”

  I found this quote in a article on the Marine Band Official website (https://www.marineband.marines.mil/)

Someone asked, “Who influenced you to compose ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’” and before the question was hardly asked, Sousa replied, “God–and I say this in all reverence! I was in Europe and I got a cablegram that my manager was dead. I was in Italy and I wished to get home as soon as possible. I rushed to Genoa, then to Paris and to England and sailed for America. On board the steamer as I walked miles up and down the deck, back and forth, a mental band was playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Day after day as I walked it persisted in crashing into my very soul. I wrote it on Christmas Day, 1896.”

I leave you with the Marine band version of The Stars and Stripes Forever. Enjoy!

Blessings!