What are we remembering?

Hope you are having a good Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day means different things to different people. 

Our younger generation probably doesn’t think too much about what it means. They’ve not lost a loved one in a war in a foreign country, or if they have, they don’t appreciate why that is significant.  The older generation remembers Vietnam and Korea. Much of our population who lived through World War II have passed away. World War I is now only in the history books.

 The Middle East conflict? I wish I could say that I understand that, but I do know that we have lost a lot of good people there.

 Looking through our old family pictures, I came across this one. Supposedly it is of my father’s father. It would have been taken before my father was born in 1915 in Germany. If the man in this picture had been called to duty to fight in a war, it would have been World War I and he would have been fighting for the Germans. Against the United States. 

 Does that make him a bad man? Does that make him an enemy? He would have been fighting for his country, whether he believed in what he was fighting for or not. He would have been fighting for the only thing he knew.

 But in the end, if this is indeed my grandfather, he came to America in 1923, with his oldest son.

 The following year, this woman, my grandmother followed him here.

 Along with four of her children, Paul, Frank, Klara and Emmy. That would be my father on the far left. 

Moral of this story, whatever you remember today, remember family and the good stuff.