From the Veterans' File by Patra Sevastiades

From the Veterans’ Files

by Patra Sevastiades

I grew up during the Vietnam War. In 1972, my 4th-grade reading teacher, Mrs. Wendell, had us hold a short debate about the draft. I suppose it was her attempt to urge us to start participating in civic life. It was a primitive debate, but I have never forgotten the earnestness of our arguments.

Thinking back, it occurs to me that I didn't ever ask my parents their opinions about Vietnam. Why not? After all, my mother had been a WAVE, a communications specialist, and my father a cryptographer, both of them in occupied Germany. But despite their pedigrees, I never thought of my family as a "military" family. My mother, who now suffers from Alzheimer's, does not tell stories of her service anymore. My father never joined the local VFW because, he said, he didn't feel he belonged there: he hadn't served in combat.

But having embraced their stories as an adult, I have come to appreciate that many veterans are like my parents, sharing their stories only when asked—and those requests are few and far between. I hope you will understand, then, my desire to highlight the stories of some of the veterans of northeastern Minnesota. I will draw these from our database of more than 6,000 stories (see www.vets-hall.org). I am happy to say that I am part of a team whose purpose is to collect, preserve, and add more stories to this database.

Let me begin by highlighting a 90-year-old veteran of WWII who just recently—65 years after the fact—received eight service medals. His name is Gail Freeman. Senator Al Franken presented the medals on April 24, 2010.

Mr. Freeman was born in Duluth and was talked into joining the Minnesota National Guard by a friend in 1939. Just as he was anticipating returning home for Christmas, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Members of his unit were sent to the southeastern coastline to defend the American shore—with broomsticks! They were later mobilized to Northern Ireland for training, then sent to North Africa and later, Italy. Read an interview with him at http://www.vets-hall.org/stories/world-war-ii/gail-freeman.

It is my hope that Mr. Freeman’s story, and those of other veterans, will be remembered.

US Senator Franken & Mr. Gail "Bud" Freeman