Pearl Harbor Day

It's Sunday, December 7, the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I always take a moment today to remember the folks who went through that, and one in particular.

His name is Russell McCurdy, he's from Huntington, IN and he was a Marine on the USS Arizona, docked in Pearl Harbor on that fateful morning. I had the privilege of meeting him several years ago at a Veterans' Day parade, and I will never forget him.

He told a great story about being in the crow's nest on the ship during the attack and how he saw the planes coming in and subsequently saw a bomb fall into one of the smoke stacks on the ship. When the order was given to abandon ship, he jumped into the water and swam ashore on a private beach behind some houses. Because of the design of the houses, the only way to get from the beach to the street was to go through the back door of one of the houses and out the front. As he went into one of the houses, he passed through the kitchen. The occupants of the house were gone, having left due to the attack. In their haste to leave, the homeowners had left a pot of water boiling on the stove. He noticed that it was boiling over, and stopped to shut off the stove and removed the pot from the heat. He said it was the strangest thing and he didn't know why in the midst of a military attack he thought to do that, but he did.

Sadly, Russell died last year. As we lose more and more members of that greatest generation, we lose more and more of those great stories and memories of the World Wars. It is heartening, however, to see that we have finally gotten a monument to those veterans in Washington. I'm also going to use this space to applaud the Honor Flight effort to get as many of those special people to see their monument before they leave us. Please honor these brave veterans by going to their site and donating if you can.

So, today in particular, but whenever possible, we should take a moment to remember and if possible, thank those who fought and are fighting to protect the freedoms that we enjoy.