Dear Folks, As all of you have probably figured out I've been spending a lot of time recently in transcribing and writing stories based on my personal and my family's experiences that span a number of years. But today after a whirlwind of house cleaning in my office I uncovered a thick file buried under all of the other stuff on my desk that made me bow my head in shame. It was my neglected Veterans Project that I started up in November 2002. It was and still is a noble project but I've fallen so far behind in keeping up with it that I'm weighed down with guilt. Back in November 2002 I was determined that every single man or woman who lives or ever lived in our local Town of Porter who served in the military be recognized by specific name and a brief history of their military service whether it be WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Peace time or even the current military situation. For the most part, none of our veterans, me included, have ever been acknowledged IN PUBLIC by individual names as having even having served in the military. And that was the premise of my project. With the cooperation of our Town of Porter Historical Society, Veteran's Questionnaires were made available all over the town. And the questionnaires have continued to be filled in and pour in ever since November 2002. For a number of months I hunkered over my computer and continued to enter the information from the questionnaires, first in a spreadsheet that I had set up that only listed such things as names, what particular "war" served in, date entered service, what branch of the service, date discharged from service, highest rank held and that sort of purely statistical information that could be printed out alphabetically by last name, etc. However, in addition to that, I rigged up a Word Processing page that would print out an individual personal history of the veteran's service that would show the more personal aspects of the his/her service such as what theatre of war they served in, what medals or commendations they had been awarded, what ships or units they served with and I guess it was when I got to that aspect of their service that maybe I couldn't take it any more. Of course there are the WWII veterans who served all through the fighting in Europe and the Pacific and then the Korean veterans with their own stories and medals and then onto the Vietnam veterans who I'm so pleased have finally come forth with information of their own service over there. Regarding the Vietnam veterans, it breaks my heart when they tell me what units they were serving with there and where they were at the time. All it takes is to search on Google to find out what was happening at that particular time and place. More than that, I kept having to record the number of Purple Hearts that have been awarded our Town of Porter veterans. So with all of that guilt on my shoulders now, I guess I'll just have to pick up the torch again, bite the bullet as it were and continue to do what I've always wanted to do. Let the local world know who our veterans are and who they were by name and make certain that their service is recorded forever in our town history. >From the Revolutionary War to the present, none of the soldiers or sailors were greeted with a ticker tape parade at the end. For the most part they straggled home by foot or by train or by bus and now by plane and with only hugs from their families to greet them when they returned home. >From my own personal point of view, none of us veterans ever really wanted a ticker tape parade at the end of our military service, but over the years there are many of us who would like to at least be acknowledged that we did indeed serve our country in whatever capacity it was that we served. Obviously, I've gotta put the old nose to the grindstone now, the shoulder to the wheel and turn to smartly to continue with my noble veteran's project. I could never forgive myself if I let all of our veterans down with this project of mine. vee Chief Petty Officer, USNR, (ret.)