Today is Veterans Day.
It’s a quasi-holiday. Banks and post offices are closed. For most of the rest of us, it’s business as usual.
But as we pause to remember the millions who served our nation, let’s think about the stories of every man.
And woman.
In 2017, children at a Fairfield elementary school eagerly filled out forms honoring veterans they knew.
Six-year-old Declan O’Gorman proudly wrote “Grandma.”‘
Kendall Gardiner — a longtime Westport resident — joined the Army in 1967. She volunteered for Viet Nam.
Kendall served as a combat nurse on the ground, treating badly wounded soldiers in a M*A*S*H-type unit. She and her fellow nurses worked 12 hour shifts, 6 to 7 days a week.
But Declan’s school balked at “Grandma.” They made him rewrite the form, with help from his 7-year-old brother Luke.
“I think the school missed a great opportunity to educate the children about all the different people who choose to become soldiers,” Kendall writes.
“And they missed an opportunity for my grandson to learn I haven’t been ‘Grandma’ my whole life.”
She’s right. Names don’t matter. Actions do.
Thank you for your service, Kendall “Grandma” Gardiner.
Kendall Gardiner, in Viet Nam.
Thanks too to all your fellow nurses, doctors, pilots, soldiers, sailors, and everyone else who served: the few remaining World II veterans; those in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan; those who were stateside, and those no longer with us.
Today, we honor you all.
(For more on Kendall Gardiner’s service, click here. Don’t forget this morning’s Veterans Day ceremony at Town Hall. The Community Band plays at 10:30; the speakers take the auditorium stage at 11.)
(“06880” is Westport’s hyper-local blog. Please click here to support our work.)
Thank you to all veterans
Thank u to all the Veterans – especially those young women who volunteered. I lived on the Oakland Navy Base in 1966 – 67 and u can’t imagine the horror. Thank u a million times
I express my sincere thanks to my family members and all veterans. And our nation expresses their thanks belatedly, to those who participated in a most unpopular war. After fighting in Vietnam, many came home to a climate where veterans were shunned. Instead of being received as heroes like our parents generation, veterans became an embarrassing reminder of American involvement in a place we had no business to be. Another sham, a pretense put upon the American people under the guise of patriotism, while the military industrial complex that General Eisenhower warned us about, made Billions and American families sacrificed their best and brightest. Have we learned anything? How about those “weapons of mass destruction”?
My maternal grandmother Rose Chilcote Myers was a founding member of the Westport Women’s Club, one of the organizers of Westport’s School Lunch Program (which came about during the Great Depression because even in Westport children were going hungry) and during WWII, while in remission from stomach cancer, worked on the production line at American Chain and Cable in Bridgeport to supply essential goods for the war effort. This made it possible for young men and women to go to war and save the world. My mother, a war widow, started and operated a day care center in Westport which enabled other mothers to work in defense production plants in Bridgeport. My adoptive grandmother, Georgene Parkin Wassell, sacrificed three of her four sons within 15 months in 1943-‘44 for the cause of freedom. We must always remember that every veteran we honor on Veterans Day had a mother and heroism is not confined to the battlefield.
Thanks Dan for elevating women’s sacrifice to public consciousness.
Thank you, Eric, for your thoughtful message. It’s important for us to remember the family members these brave veterans left behind. Their lives were changed forever. May God bless them always.
Hat’s off to all veterans today and every day. Thank You for your sacrifices on our behalf. Today can also be a day of reflection. Next time you find yourself stressing over small matters consider what others (often braver than you) were required to endure. Salute!
Thank you to all Veterans and a huge shoutout to all the women in service. I’ve had the honor to work with many Army nurses and soldiers under my command – but we all work together as one.
Branton Zhang – Medical Services Officer, US Army