Today, the last surviving Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from World War 2 passed away. It’s a reminder that the Greatest Generation continues to dwindle.  My grandparents are all deceased, but one grandfather fought in the Pacific theater and the other fought in Europe, so I have direct connections to the war.

Fortunately, we have as much or more historical material on the Second World War as any in history.  The interest about it for the last 30 years has allowed us to archive and understand what happened.  However, it is sad that the march of time takes these heroes away as rapidly as it has.  I remember going to my grandpa’s reunions as a child, of course not really understanding in total what was going on, but I knew I was in the presence of great men.

Of course they didn’t see themselves that way.  For them, it was sacrilege to believe that they were heroes, they who came home.  To me, it is incredibly heroic to have experienced such horror and come home to build a life, and a post-war country that lifted so many up out of poverty.  That is what I wish to be a part of.  It is time once again to bring prosperity to our country, and especially Kent County.