To See and Remember

I didn’t post anything special for Veteran’s Day (which I prefer to think of as Armistice Day) but you might want to take a look at this:

Like so many others of his generation, Harold Weir didn’t talk much about the war. Whatever pain he felt — from the bullets still in his back, to the images in his head — he did not share.

“He truly never slept through a night,” said Harold’s daughter Donna Weir. “My mom told me that. He would always wake up every night.”

Within the last 10 years or so, Harold did recount some of what happened to him, and his youngest daughter Donna pitched him on the idea of taking Honor Flight Chicago, the trip to Washington to visit the monument built in honor of the vets of World War II.

“Actually, I forged his signature on the application because he just didn’t want to do it,” Donna said. “He wasn’t interested, but then as soon as I’d told him what I’d done, he couldn’t stop talking about it.”

And so, a week ago Wednesday, Donna and her dad and over 90 of his contemporaries went to Washington — wheelchairs and walkers — to see and remember, to be thanked and cheered.

Read the whole thing.