Wednesday is Veterans Day.
If you love your freedom, thank a veteran.
That's the least we can do for those who offered their time, treasure, honor and their very being to found or keep this country free.

We should have no trouble finding one to thank for in 2009 there are 23,442,000 living American veterans. Forty percent are more than 65 years of age. A projected 2,226,600 are veterans of World War II; we are losing 900 of those each day.
Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, set aside to mark the end of World War I. Known as "The Great War," and "the war to end all wars," World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.

That was seven months after fighting ended with a temporary cessation effective at 11 a. m. on Nov. 11, 1918, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson declared Nov. 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day calling for "......reflections... filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory...."
By 1926, 27 states had declared Armistice Day a legal holiday and the Congress complied with a 1938 law.

Set aside primarily to honor veterans of World War I, the law was amended and in 1954 Veterans Day became a day to honor all veterans. The "three-day weekend bill" of 1968 changed Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October beginning in 1971, but so many people objected it was moved back to Nov. 11 in 1978.
And so it rightfully remains.

There are many ways to thank a veteran and most would surely appreciate the two simple words, "Thank you."
You can thank them by taking part in ceremonies and parades honoring them or by contributing to an organization that honors them by buying a red poppy, a red flower that became a symbol of World War I after a bloody battle at a place called Flanders Fields in Belgium.

Best of all, we can thank our veterans by taking up their fight. I'm not talking about joining the military, though a young person could thus be served well. But today many of the standards and way of life for which our veterans fought are under attack, with too many folks content to be non-judgmental of immorality and to be only relatively moral. We care too much for personal pleasure and wealth and too little for family and eternity. I am sure it saddens many of our veterans, especially the older ones, to see this terrible decline in America's culture. We must join them if we are to end these insidious changes in our way of life.
The challenge to join this fight is not unlike the one in this poem by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of World War I.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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