My immediate family hasn't seen any action for over six decades. Somehow most of our post-WWII vets were stationed in pretty safe places. And that's ok with me. But I haven't forgotten the ones who fought in the big war. There's too many to list and many of them I never knew or heard much about. But both of my grandfathers served in WWII. Both saw action and both survived. They survived despite the odds. One was on a bomber in the South Pacific and if you've ever watched a History channel documentary on bombers, you know they didn't have a high survival rate. Grandpa flew more than 500 hours in those bombers.
My other grandpa was on Normandy Beach. Have you seen the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan?
Books, movies and the History channel is about my only way of trying to connect with those times. All the people in my family that lived through that are gone now. Not that they talked about it anyway. Almost no one ever does, that should tell us something.
Sometimes I think about my grandfathers at hockey games and football games, during the national anthem. But more often I think about the men and women that are stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't really know when that started, but why wouldn't you think of the people that are serving our country every time you hear your national anthem?
That is why I feel people need to respect the anthem and why we should always play it, regardless of the people that use it for other purposes. I think about the people that are serving our country right now, that are living and working in dangerous places. And it reminds me that there are a lot of us that are very, very lucky.
-From the Point
You said it so very well, all I can say is "Thank You". I don't know why everybody doesn't understand this.
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