Saturday is my favorite day of our three day weekends.
Particularly now, Saturday offers the beginning of the “break” with a seemingly endless promise of “more” until it all ends on Tuesday.
This Memorial Day weekend finds me reflective about my past Memorial Days.
Thinking about my Dad, Virgil Benjamin Warn.
He was born February 25, 1922 in Toledo then died November 7, 2005 in Ann Arbor.
I was with him when he stopped breathing about 5pm then I flew home to Los Angeles, only to repeat the trip four days later for his burial on 11/11/05.
Virgil did not learn his real name until 1942 when his Mom got a letter for some guy named Virgil Warn from the government that started “Greetings”
Until then, he was always “Richard Walker” and his buddies called him Dick or Richard.
Drafted into the U.S. Army after Pearl Harbor, the newly minted “Virgil” left Toledo for the first time in his life.
Basic training prepared Virgil and his new colleagues to be infantry soldiers and he no longer remembered Richard Walker. They fought as part of the 82nd Airborne glider force that entered France on D-Day. Dad fought Nazis for three days before mortar shrapnel wounded him for the third time in the war. This time he was placed with a pile of dead guys and might have remained there if not for the miraculous discovery that he was still breathing by another GI from Toledo who happened by and recognized his homeboy then raised Holy Hell until the medics took care of him. My own mortality beginning five years later seemed very much in doubt at that point.
As a D-Day vet, my Dad remained proud of his service until his death many decades later. He advised me to pass on going to Vietnam because our family debt had been paid to Old Glory. My namesake Uncle Chuck had been killed as a POW by Nazis and Dad was 80 percent disabled after the war.
So this Memorial Day, I propose a toast to honor my Dad Virgil, a real American hero!
RIP Dad
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