To the Republic for which they stood

My illustration for Memorial Day is a cross-stitch done, we are 90% sure, by my grandmother (known to me as “Mamma”). We know she did needlework, and I’ve seen other items she stitched on linen. This seems to me like it’s a kit or at least a pattern, and it resembles a kit from Bucilla, though lettering, layout, etc. differ. That kit, I’m guessing from Bucilla’s history, probably came out in the late ’60s or perhaps around the 1976 Bicentennial. I’d love to find out.

But as far as my own Mamma is concerned, she had plenty of reason to stitch it in the 1940s or 1950s, too, because her husband — my Pappa — was among the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and she was among the millions more who waited nervously at home for news. My Pappa came home, to a long life, love and family, so he is not numbered among those for whom today is specifically set aside.

So I post this in memory of his friends who did not come home, and their fellow service members, men and women, who did not come home in all our wars and actions, in peacetime, in training for combat, from jungles and beaches and motor pools and hospitals and dirt roads and blown-out towns, in ships and planes and helicopters and trucks, in the air, on land and sea.

thank you all.