By Jack Ewers, F452786
November 2016
Veterans Day, November 11, is a time to thank living veterans and to honor those who died while serving in America’s armed forces. In Canada, November 11 is called Remembrance Day.
Memorial Day is also a day for honoring military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice. The holiday this year allowed my wife, Mary, and me to deepen our memories of those who died in service to the United States. As we traveled through Gulf Islands National Seashore and Florida’s Emerald Coast in our 2015 Pleasure-Way Lexor Type B motorhome, the beaches were beautiful and endless, of course. But we were most inspired by other stops on our journey.
The first was Natural Bridge Battlefield Historic State Park, southeast of Tallahassee, Florida. The battlefield is a reminder of the Americans who died in the most deadly war in our history, the Civil War. At Natural Bridge, a combined Union naval and army force attacked Confederate troops. Many of the Confederates were teenagers from the nearby Florida Military and Collegiate Institute (which would later become Florida State University), as well as elderly men. The Union navy ran aground in the St. Marks River, and the Union army was repulsed by the defenders.
The next site was Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island. After the War of 1812, the U.S. began fortifying its major ports. This fort was built between 1829 and 1834 to protect Pensacola Bay and serves as a reminder of how long we have defended our shores.
We then visited the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. Hanging from the ceiling, in flying formation, are jets from the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s flight demonstration squadron. This was a poignant sight, since a Blue Angels pilot died in a crash on June 2.
We turned north to visit our daughter in Atlanta for the Memorial Day holiday and took Alabama State Route 9 and U.S. 27 from Montgomery, Alabama, to Adairsville, Georgia. We had the road to ourselves as it rolled through beautiful, green farmlands and forests. We were inspired by the small country churches with their iconic white steeples, and graveyards festooned with flowers and flags in honor of Memorial Day. Likewise, flowers and flags decorated the town squares of small villages along the road. It reminded us that the American heartland still exists and is proud of its heritage. For us, this will always be a time to remember.