<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=20Lbho_1GlWaxnu00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=20Lbho_1GlWaxnu00" width="1530" height="1151" >My Uncle Bruce from Caldwell Parish came home from Korea. He came home with both legs and both arms and, by most measures that the world uses to count such things, he came home whole. But anyone who spent time with him knew better. The fighting he witnessed on the Korean Peninsula was so horrific, so burned into his memory, that it followed him home like a shadow that never left. He had nightmares the rest of his life. Not occasionally. Not when something reminded him. The rest of his life.He never talked much about what he saw. Men of that generation rarely did. They came home, they went back to work, they raised their families, and they carried whatever they carried in silence. That was the deal they made with themselves, and most of them kept it until the day they died.Uncle Bruce is why Veterans Day means what it means to me.He is not the only one. My family has sent men and women to serve this country across multiple generations, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, and more. My oldest son Tanner served as a United States Marine. My son Tyler is still serving today with the U.S. Army National Guard, working as a sniper. When I talk about the cost of freedom, I am not speaking in abstractions. I know what it looks like. It looks like my boys. It looks like Uncle Bruce sitting in a chair, staring at something no one else in the room could see.Veterans Day is Nov. 11. It falls on a Wednesday this year, right in the middle of a regular workweek. And that is precisely why I want to say this loud and clear: stop what you are doing. Find a Veterans Day event in your community and show up to it. Shake a hand. Say thank you and mean it. Take your children and let them see it, because what they learn about gratitude and sacrifice before the age of ten tends to stay with them.There are approximately 18 million veterans living in the United States today. They represent every state, every background, every branch of service. They gave years of their lives, and many gave everything they had. Since 2001 alone, more than 120,000 veterans have died by suicide. Not in combat. At home. After the war. The VA estimates that an average of 17.6 veterans die by suicide every single day. Some researchers put that number even higher, closer to 44 per day when all self-inflicted deaths are counted. Among veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, roughly one in three will face post-traumatic stress at some point in their lifetime.We have not always done right by these heroes.The organizations built to support them are struggling. The VFW peaked at 2.1 million members in 1992. By 2021, that number had fallen below 1 million, nearly half a generation’s worth of members gone, along with posts closing across the country because there are not enough people to keep the doors open. The American Legion lost nearly a million members in 15 years. These are not just numbers. These are communities of veterans who built something together, spaces where the men and women who served could find each other, and those spaces are disappearing.Part of the reason is that younger veterans have not always felt welcomed there. Part of it is that our culture has grown disconnected from military service in general. Less than 1 percent of the American population serves in the armed forces today. For many Americans, Veterans Day is a day off and a sale at the mattress store. I do not say that to be harsh. I say it because it is true, and because it is something we can change.My dad, Sammy Franklin, used to say that the reason America is the greatest country in the world is not its wealth or its land or its laws. It is the men and women who were willing to stand between those things and whoever threatened them. Fifty-four years of editing a newspaper gave him a clear view of the best and worst of people, and that was his settled conclusion.I believe he was right. Tyler is training right now. I do not always know exactly where he is or what he is doing, and I have learned to make a certain peace with that, though it is never a complete peace. Tanner served, came home, and built a life. I am proud of both of them in a way that is almost impossible to put into words. What I know is that they did not serve so that we could take a day off and forget about it.Uncle Bruce had nightmares the rest of his life. He never asked for a parade. He never asked for a speech. He just asked, like all of them do, that what he endured meant something.Let it mean something. On Nov. 11, find a way to say so.</div></body>

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My Uncle Bruce from Caldwell Parish came home from Korea. He came home with both legs and both arms and, by most measures that the world uses to count such things, he came home whole. But anyone who spent time with him knew better. The fighting he witnessed on the Korean Peninsula was so horrific, so burned into his memory, that it followed him home like a shadow that never left. He had nightmares the rest of his life. Not occasionally. Not when something reminded him. The rest of his life.

For Uncle Bruce, and all the rest

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My Uncle Bruce from Caldwell Parish came home from Korea. He came home with both legs and both arms and, by most measures that the world uses to count such

For Uncle Bruce, and all the rest

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