June 11, 2004
REMINDER
One fact was beaten to the very edge of finality during the recent extended Memorial Day week-end and D-Day observances.
All of the media - radio, TV , print and Internet - seemed especially obligated and intent on reporting again-and-again that the total number of World War II veterans Â? those still more or less upright - is around four million and that we are, furthermore, dying off at a rate of a thousand a day - give or take a score or so.
This cheerful bit of news was set forth with suitable fanfare and commercial supposed to brighten our holiday and to allow us to expand our memories of D-Day and other times best set aside rather than relived.
I thought of this rather odd treatment of a minor news item this week when I[paid my quarterly visit to the Veteran's Hospital at Salem,Virginia. I'm a relative newcomer to the facility having avoided VA help as long as I could do with such aid. The World War II veterans are still evident there, in the corridors , clinics and resident areas, for a wide variety of obvious reasons, many of them harsh realities which cannot be explained away by statistics or body counts. We' re very obvious. After all, the majority of us are in our eighties or more, we are more or less -mobile in a loose sense of the term. I have found the VAserving g this area to be very helpful in the past year since I discovered what I should have looked into years ago.
I did some GI Bill bits while I was in the college years ago. I was about five years - more or less - behind time in everything and while the non dollars a month help in college, it never quite made up for the lost years. So many Worldwarr I veterans share that time-loss...evenn those who lived in states where a token Bonus veteran's bonus payment was made . Some turned to the helping hand offered by the Veteran's Administration. Others seemed be content simply to do the best they could Â?on their ownÂ?,so to speak. In time, many of those holdouts, too, found the veteran of our wars have not been forgotten and these most of all, seem to appreciateate what the VA has done for them.
It may be prop or for us to remember, when Memorial Day rolls around again and again, the true purpose of the special day of remembrance.
A.L.M. JUNE 9, 2004 [c429wds]
