Thanks Zeffy. I always have my father & his brothers & brothers-in-law, the whole generation really, on my mind at this time of year & again on Veteran's Day, Pearl Harbor Day... Daddy was in the US Army, serving at Anzio & North Africa. He never talked seriously about it, always made jokes about laying telephone line & his buddies playing jokes on each other. I never even knew he was at Anzio until I got a copy of his records, too late, long after he was gone.

Sorry I'm late to this one, but I couldn't let it pass. As a proud son of a man who landed on Iwo Jima and who heard from someone who learned first hand of how war really is hell, I too salute all those who have fought to keep us the land of the free. As long as we remember to hold dear the phrase "In God We Trust", then God will indeed bless America. tj

So, I have this uncle . . . who gave my parents a beautiful large Chinese platter, which sits in my living room, but I never knew him, because he died in World War II. I was always told he died on the Bataan Death March. Turns out that's not exactly true. In the last decade, there's so much more information available on the Internet, If you'e been looking for people -- try again. And there's a ton of information on servicemen. only this year I found this out: On this Memorial Day, I'd like to take the opportunity to remember my uncle, Benjamin Lee McMakin, my father's favorite brother. He was a United States Marine Major serving in the Philllipines in WWII, when he was captured in May 1942 by the Japanese at Corregidor. He managed to survive the Japanese prison camps for more than two years, until in December 1944 he was transferred to the Oryoko Maru, a POW "hell ship" -- an unmarked ship transporting prisoners for slave labor, which was bombed by the Allies, and was killed on the ship or trying to escape. I never met him, of course, but I remember. Uncle Ben -- thank you for your service, and . . . I have your plate!

I am retired, but for many years I was working in the floral trade, either as a retailer or wholesaler. I first got into it when I was in college, working part time for my aunt in the early 1960s. Even then she still called it Decoration Day. We were super busy during the days leading up to Decoration Day, it was a date that was fixed, not a 3-day weekend as it is now. A local woman grew peonies and we went through several hundred of them as we made simple bouquets for the cemetery. We had two drivers who did that chore; those two guys were also the ones who delivered "grave blankets" beginning in mid-November. Customers who bought one, generally ordered the other. Those guys knew where all the graves were that they needed to know, no stopping at the office to get directions. Times have changed a whole bunch and not many communities still decorate at the cemeteries as we did then.