VETERANS DAY MEMORIES 2016
…from a personal Facebook post:
Written and published November 12, 2016 by J. Tim Russin, DDS
Thank you to all the Veterans who have served to protect us and our freedom.
My Father, Peter, was a Battle of the Bulge WWII survivor who quoted “It wasn’t my turn to die”, and was humbled throughout the rest of his life, and ALWAYS respected those who have served, especially those who “never came back”…
He never brought up “war stories”, quietly left the room when they WERE brought up, but most importantly cherished every day that he was given in his days to live for the poor SOB that was a foot and a half from him that was shot to death and became not so fortunate as he.
That was war. There often was no skill involved, you became a statistic or not.
Pete always became very emotional on each Memorial Day that I witnessed helping him/tending to the graves at Mt. Calvery Cemetary in Steubenville, Ohio where I grew up and was brought along in the ’63 Pontiac Catalina as a middle schooler to help him clean up each Vet grave that he knew of in the cemetery of every soldier that perished in WWII… because my Father was simply alive to do so. It went on all day long, and I couldn’t understand at the time why he would spend the entire day there doing this EVERY year, but now I do. Very few words were exchanged between us during the day, you just heard the wind blowing through the trees, trimmed up the headstones, planted flowers all day and carried buckets of water from the closest spigot to water the flowers that we planted in and read and imagined the names of the deceased who’s remains were just below you.
Dozens and dozens of geraniums were purchased from/donated by DiGregory’s nursery in Steubenville for my Father’s efforts…the trunk in the Catalina was always filled with flowers. (Mr. D just passed recently at age 91). Dad and I planted trunkloads of them each year in May.
I can just pass on the vanity license plate photo that my Father finally bought in his later years of his life when he passed in ’97 that have I saved to this day.
Sort of a strange memory, but I do cherish my Dad’s efforts to remember his “Buddies”, but it taught me a lifelong lesson in respect…
I tell this story to both remember my Father’s humility/service/understanding to those “Who gave all” and to both extend our services of Endodontics and Anesthesia that we have contracted with the Veterans Hospital/USF/Tampa to serve the Vets…
