37th Thankful Thursday: Veterans Day 2010

Today I am grateful for the men and women who have served their country and their people, in combat or not, in chaos or peace, in the armed services, as a police officer, as a firefighter...  (If I left out your particular call of duty, please add it in the comments)

All three of my grandpas served in the armed forces (Navy, Marines, and Army), a cousin served in the Coast Guard, a distant cousin's husband serves as a Ranger, and numerous great-uncles and other relatives have served as well.

A Wyoming neighbor served in the Battle of the Bulge and was left for dead.  He still has shards of metal in his back from the bomb that blew up by him.



I meet weekly with a group of young ladies.  In less than 30 minutes we each wrote between two and three thank you cards.  We sent about 22 cards to a regiment stationed in South Korea, and another 22ish letters to a group of cadets in South Carolina.

Any Soldier is an organization who provides addresses for you to send packages and letters to.  It's worth taking a moment to view their homepage and read the names under the photos of a few men and women who gave their lives for freedom.

Here is a credible list of many organizations who serve servicemen and servicewomen.  Service ranges from donating blood, a car, or even your used ink cartridges.

Brian Horn, the son of the founders of Any Soldier, wrote the following on the website:

"I couldn't be any more proud to have been a part of such an honorable organization as AnySoldier.com... To have been able to distribute the mail personally as a contact to soldiers who get next to no mail at all and for that brief moment see the look of hope in their faces of good things to come. The hope that somebody out there does care. That somebody does in fact love them as they deservingly should be loved. The hope that some day their involvement in the fight on terror was to preserve those that believed in them so much through and through, until their fight was done. We fight so that maybe, just maybe your grandchildren won't have to..."

This week: Who are you grateful for this Veterans Day?