VETERANS DAY, NOVEMBER 11. 2011

Dear Family,

Today on 11/11/2011 we celebrate Veteran's Day which date was selected to remember the end of the First World War on November 11th and to remember all veterans and their service..  Here is a photo of the Dad in his dress Navy Blue officers uniform showing the rank of Lieutenant in the Medical Corp.

I only thought about it again today because we were invited to Cheryl's kids performance at their Cardon School.  Each of her five girls either had a signing or reading part in a performance remembering past and current veterans of conflicts.

It was quite a nice program which opened with a prayer, pledge of allegiance, salute to the flag, the choral singing of the National Anthem and readings from each conflict going back to the First World War.

It was very nice and I was moved.  They had each veteran stand and say in which service he served, during what conflict and what branch of the service.  I stood up and said, "US Navy, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Medical Corp during the Vietnam conflict".  They had two men there who were Navy who had fought in the WWII in New Guinea, a few from Vietnam and several from the current conflicts.

I have never talked much about this in the family so this is a short note.  They had a doctor draft during the Vietnam war and you had to serve two years either in the Peace Corp or in the armed services.  Instead of being drafted, I volunteered in the Navy and a friend got me into the School of Aviation Medicine, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida where we served from 1964-1966.  Pensacola was a training command so they were strict about uniforms, saluting, and inspections.  I had to wear a sword with my dress whites during an inspection.

I did not see conflict.  I saw more conflict and gun shot wounds in Boston and Detroit.  The school of Aviation Medicine trained Navy flight surgeons and did a lot of basic research related to the space program..  I was in a pulmonary lab where we measured oxygen consumption and pulmonary functions on the Mercury Astronauts and I  met several of them.  The computation of oxygen consumption involved a series of calculations so I wrote a program in Fortan to solve this, the data was punched on IBM sort cards and run through one of the real old huge computers we had in the school.

We did basic research on vestibular function in hypobaric conditions, (altitude).  This was for the space program where there were problems with vertigo.  I set up a lab where we studied coronary artery flow in awake greyhound dogs at altitude and wrote a a couple of papers. I also had to stand watch in the base medical dispensary at night and you could not leave that watch.  I had to stand watch the day Bryan was born; we had our neighbor who was the Naval Obstetrician pick Mom up when she started labor, deliver Bryan and then he called me on my watch.

The base trained Naval Aviators and the Enterprise was the carrier that they qualified on.  I had such respect for these men and for what they gave.  It is so appropriate that we remember those who have served, those who have fallen  and those who have returned to guarantee our freedom and safety.

Love, Dad