Saturday afternoon, Doug and I went to honor our WWII veterans and to do a little WWII research. Honor flights send veterans to Washington D.C. to see their memorial. A couple of film makers put together a documentary about the flights, and the world premier of the movie was at Miller Park in Milwaukee. It was interesting to see. One man was a real flirt back in the day – and still is. As he sat in his living room telling about his time on Iwo Jima, his wife piped up from the dining room that she had never heard these stories. Another one of the men in the film, an unassuming older man, was the “human skeleton” featured on a Life Magazine cover when his POW camp was liberated. He weighed only 70 pounds at the time.
They had reenactors mingling with the crowd in period dress. There was a USO tent with performers singing period songs and doing comedy. There was an antique car show, a military vehicle show and many other things.
It was a moving tribute to the generation that gave so much that we may have freedom. These men and women are dying out and their stories are going with them. These stories need to be told so that we never forget their sacrifice. By the end of the movie, there was hardly a dry eye in the place.
On a fun note: we set a Guinness world record for the number of people at a movie premier!
I love that generation more than any other. I love seeing those uniforms and ladies outfits. That was my parents’ era, when they were young adults and in their prime. Now my parents are gone: my mom passed away 21 years ago, and my dad passed away 7 years ago. It is so sad to see our world losing this generation. I feel that we are losing a great deal with the passing of these people. The world is definitely not the same.