Veteran's Day: My personal American hero

This Veteran's Day I'd like to honor my father, who served in the U.S. Army for seventeen years. Through the course of his career in the Army my father specialized in weapons and ammunition, but most notably served as a member of a search and recovery team. He and his team went to Guam, Vietnam and various other places recovering the bodies of soldiers who had never made it home during the Korean and Vietnam wars. He made sure that those soldiers were sent home with a proper burial.

My father told me a stories of how he was captured and imprisoned by enemy forces during a mission, how he was forced to eat cockroaches and dog so he wouldn't offend the leaders of the tribes that he went to and how he was overrun by scorpions in his shoes, bed, and clothing. I made sure to listen intently to his stories so that I would always remember his valor and his sacrifice. But my father made the ultimate sacrifice: his career.

Nearing the end of his seventeen year run, my birth mother and father divorced. She refused to take all of the children and my father wouldn't allow it. So he took all of us, five children under the age of ten, and he left his career behind him. He was three years short of retirement and he gave that up for us. I can never repay him for what he did for us and I don't think I could say 'thank you' to him enough for all the hardships he has gone through trying to provide for us.

My father is a great man, he was a great soldier and he is my American hero.

Happy Veteran's Day friends.