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I will always hold the memory of my father as a hero who served his family and country, no matter what the price. My memories of my dad will always include the personal hardships that he endured for the love of his family...long 20 hour days including all night marathons driving big tankers filled with gasoline through freezing cold and blizzards, all so he could provide his family with things that he never had as a kid.

I am in awe of the hardship that my father personally endured.  He only spoke of World War II in his later years, and then only grudgingly.  It was only in later years that I came to understand the true nature of the sacrifices made on those battlefields, including my father's personal experiences on Guadalcanal and other islands in the South Pacific.  And what a terrible war it was; maybe beyond the ability of our current computer game battlefield mentality to conceive. Death measured in millions, sheer maiming butchery beyond measure. Heat, cold, pain, deprivation. But still, he and his buddies endured. As one veteran put it, the enemy "didn't know how much fighting our young steelworkers, farmhands and roughnecks had in them." But find out they did, in clash after clash of uncommon valor. In researching my father's military decorations, I learned that his unit earned the Presidential Unit Citation - awarded for extraordinary heroism in action on Guadalcanal - not once, but twice.

I hope our nation will cherish forever the greatest generation in the history of mankind. They are leaving us now, far too quickly. It is time to re-look at what they did and re-establish it as our standard. Let us be humble in their presence... and in their memory. They were the rock of our age, quiet, hardworking, dignified, fiercely in love with freedom. My father's heart and spirit are synonymous with his generation, and I will cherish his memory forever. He was America's best. Dad, thank you for being a good man, a good father, someone I could admire and look up to beyond all others. I will love you forever.