Sometimes we just don’t realize how lucky we are.

Listen to some of the stories of our World War II veterans, and realization comes a bit easier.

My dad was a WWII veteran, although he didn’t talk about it much. He was training to be an Air Force pilot, but a bout with pneumonia changed his career path and he became a radio operator. After listening to stories told recently by some of our local veterans from the Greatest Generation, I wonder what might have happened to my father if he had become a pilot.

While I’m sure he had some fascinating stories from his time in the Air Force (he intercepted foreign radio transmissions, but that’s all he would, or could, ever say), his were likely far different from those of the Pearl Harbor and Midway survivors we were privileged to hear at last week’s Veterans Day program.

The video “Pearl Harbor — A Time to Remember,” produced by Riney Production Services and shown at the ceremony, is one I heartily recommend for people of all ages. Nothing can make more of an impression than listening to someone with firsthand knowledge of an event — it makes it so much more real. It puts a human face on events we typically only read about.

Likewise, the story of former WWII pilot Joe Moser is another example of why Tom Brokaw coined the term “Greatest Generation.”

Moser, who wound up being shot down and interned in a German  concentration camp, is soft spoken and humble. He was just doing his job. That’s probably what all the men we heard from on Veterans Day would say.

So I count my blessings for people like them and  for all our military veterans and active duty personnel who are willing to do their jobs, no matter the cost. We are lucky to have them.

-Kathy Reed, editor