Today I got a call from my folks around 4:00 to join them and my nephew Grant at Blake’s Lotaburger for dinner. It was a welcome request, because I had not ate anything worthwhile all day until I joined them for dinner. Grant loves Blake’s like I and my folks do, so it was a great event. We lived it up, seasoned fries style.

For a guy who didn’t want to really leave the house today, it was probably the highlight of my day.

And it was a suiting meal, because the marketing materials for Blake’s are printed in red, white, and blue, which certainly added to the patriotism I felt on this day, Veteran’s Day. Despite whatever else is going on in life, when national holidays roll through, I am grateful to participate in their observation. I love this country I was fortunate to be born into.

99 years ago today, the armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in Compiègne, France, signalling the end of the Great War. Each year since, countries around the world have celebrated the eleventh day of November as a day of remembrance, a moment for recollection on the end of that war that took 37 million lives. After World War I, the Second World War and then the Korean War added weight to the meaning of the American holiday once set aside to celebrate the end of World War I, and in 1954, America’s Armistice Day became Veteran’s Day, a day in which veterans, both living and dead- members of our nation’s armed forces- could be honored.

I don’t know why I feel significance in going out early on these flag days and attaching a copy of Old Glory to the front of the house. Our family is not really a military family. We have no close relatives who died in a Vietnamese jungle, or on Guadalcanal, or during the allied landings in Normandy We have no pilots, no paratroopers, no foot soldiers or sailors. We have no decorated great uncles or heralded officers in our recent family lore.

I guess part of it, for me, is because, still, my dad showed me he loved America by flying that flag every chance he could. That flag stood for our republic and its ideals, and the many men and women who chose to put their lives on the line to defend it and to keep it “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.

I guess I get it to a large extent from what I’ve witnessed from him over the years.

It was also fitting that when I turned on the TV this morning so I could huddle under a blanket on the couch for a little while to stay warm, I flipped to PBS, and there was a show on the famed Easy Company and its remarkable role in its march from Normandy on into Germany, leading eventually to the liberation of Europe in 1944. The “Band of Brothers” story, told as a briefer documentary, where all of the story’s essentials remained true to Ambrose’s depictions.

Ah yes. It’s Veteran’s Day.

God bless you, serving men and women.