Blog 3660 – 11.11.2025

“Thank You, For Your Service”

One hundred and fourteen years ago on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour the Great War to end all wars ended. Barely one generation later the name of the Great War was changed to World War I because World War II had begun. The holiday we celebrate today was originally called Armistice Day to memorialize the hope that all that terrible loss would result in the end of all wars. It did not and so the name was changed to Veterans Day where we commemorate the living veterans who have served in the Armed Forces of a grateful nation. We who did, wear our hats and ribbons and those who did not often utter the phrase, “Thank you for your service.”

World War I and World War II soldiers, sailors and marines came home to parades and kisses. The Korean War veterans to fewer parades and fewer kisses and the Vietnam War retuning veterans came home to no parades and in mine and many other cases to no kisses at all. In the immortal words of the Hee Haw song while I was away serving my country in that very unpopular war of my first young wife I could sing, “… You met another and poof you were gone.”

Fifty-five years ago today I was in South Vietnam and had received word that all those who had started their one year tour in January of 1970 were getting to go home a month early. That happy news was in my case tempered by the suspicion that as The Music Man sang, there was trouble awaiting me in River City, my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I had not received a letter from my wife in three months at that time nor would I. My mother found her and forced her to be at the airport to welcome me home. But there was no welcome home kiss only her confession that she had indeed met and loved another.

To my wife of thirty six years, of whom my mother said upon first meeting her, “This woman is never going to let you go” I have said more than once, “I wish it had been you that I married first because I know you would have welcomed me home with hugs and kisses and sent me sexy letters to remind me throughout all those months what was waiting for me at home.

There is a line from a beautiful Christmas song that I love to sing and listen to throughout the year, The Gift, that says, “You saved my heart from being broken apart, you gave your love away, I’m thankful every day, can’t find the words to say, thank you for the gift.”

Today I tip my hat, both of them in fact, to my loving, lovely, and still sexy wife, the light and the love of my life and say, “Thank you, for your service, thank you for the gift.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k8dxQmBk6mABg73L1lf_LdpiUXU4W8yy/view?usp=drivesdk

The Gift