Today is a day of remembrance of
those fallen while serving the United States Armed Forces. There are so many. It
helps to remember someone or a few that we may have known, and I am thinking of
them today while I do something I've never done before: attending a Memorial Day
event at a National Cemetery.
This holiday began as Decoration
Day right after the Civil War. For all of my life it has meant very little. I
almost always worked during it because of the Memorial Day Saleobrations. Now I
choose to celebrate what I will and when.
I've served in the military too
and my father, Ralph Minion, is a fallen hero to me. He served in the US Army Air Corps before
it was called the Air Force during the end of World War II. He survived the war,
and got married and had a family with three children. I was the eldest, a
baby-boomer born in 1949.
He joined another uniformed service organization in
1955 called the California Highway Patrol, following his brother who joined in
1948. He rode Harley-Davidson's in places like East Los Angeles. In January of
1964, he was killed on that motorcycle while on duty.
Though this day is traditionally
for fallen service people, after visiting the National Cemetery Ceremony and
paying respects to the hundreds of thousands, I am remembering my personal
fallen hero today by visiting a memorial at the State Capitol in Sacramento with
his name and a lot of other fallen heroes all around the state.
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