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The Last of the Finest

Ten plus years ago on a bright warm 4th of July morning in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood  I went to my local coffee purveyor on the corner to get my usual. As usual I got in line. In front of me was an American-Asian family with two little girls, a Lesbian couple I’d seen around, a young girl and boy who looked like they were just coming home from a long date’s night, a blond woman with her blond daughter, a Hispanic looking man with a toddler asleep in a stroller, and, of course, me, your average white guy.

As I stood there waiting for my coffee to be brewed I noticed a frail old man I hadn’t seen before sitting by the window looking at the people walking by outside. I’d put him somewhere in his late 80s with a face of keen features and arms that suggested an earlier strength but which now contained bones almost bird-like. He had a salt and pepper mustache carefully trimmed and calm eyes. He was wearing plain khaki trousers, and a beige short-sleeved shirt. On his head he wore one of those standard issue baseball caps that said “Navy.”

As I was leaving the coffee shop I stopped for a moment and said, “Excuse me, Sir, but were you in the Navy?”

“Thirty years,” he said, “starting in World War II. I handled amphibious landing boats in the Pacific. Kwajalein, Iwo Jima, Lyete Gulf, Okinawa. ”

“Thank you,” I said, shaking his hand. “I thank all of you.”

“You’re welcome. There’s not too many of us left. Getting down to less than three million I understand.”

“I hope you have many more Fourths,” I said.

“Me too. I like it here. You know, except for the time in the Navy I’ve lived up here on Queen Anne all my life. It’s better here today, better in the country today. Not the political stuff. I don’t have much to say about that. But in the way we all live together up here now. It’s more different than it was. More kinds of people now. And that’s better.”

“I agree,” I said saying good bye. “And thank you and your whole generation again for giving me everything I’ve had all my life.”

“Any time,” he said, looking past me at a family of five that was bicycling past the window in the warm morning sun. “People always say it’s an honor to meet me these days. But they’ve got it all backwards. It was an honor for me to be of service.”

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Howard Nelson July 3, 2017, 2:48 PM

    For it is in the giving that we receive, though we do not give to receive. It is in our nature to give.

  • Bill Jones July 3, 2017, 3:35 PM

    And the bullshit never ends.

    Twenty trillion of debt doesn’t go nowhere.

    • Jack July 4, 2022, 9:57 AM

      Bill, that was a shitty comment and you should be ashamed for delivering it. You are on a site attended by some who are vets who served in peacetime and by others who didn’t get the peace time gig. But that service counts because without knowing what we might get into every one of us went when called. Others of us did not wait for that call and we volunteered. We ‘seen our duty and we done it’.

      If you did not serve the only manly response for your trite ass is silence or a simple ‘thank you for your service’ tendered to anyone you run into who did serve. And let me repeat, you should be ashamed of your self for that FUBAR comment.

  • MMinLamesa July 4, 2017, 4:41 AM

    Always someone pissing in the punch

  • D S Craft July 4, 2017, 2:09 PM

    Thanks Bill. We really needed that wake-up call.

  • Howard Nelson July 4, 2017, 3:22 PM

    “It was an honor for me to be of service.”
    May we all earn honor for service military or civilian.
    May we civilians welcome the debt we incur by the military service of others — and repay that debt appropriately and gladly.

  • Casey Klahn July 4, 2021, 5:58 PM

    The next guy that mentions the debt on this hallowed ground gets the back of my hand.

    Perhaps you miss the part where there is no renumeration for the epic grace of giving one’s life for others.

  • Roscoe July 4, 2021, 6:18 PM

    God bless them; God bless them all. I hope the rest of us can can learn to live lives that are worthy of their sacrifice.

  • J July 4, 2021, 7:08 PM

    Casey,
    Hear, hear!

  • LP July 4, 2022, 5:00 AM

    Tears in my eyes

  • John Venlet July 4, 2022, 8:06 AM

    A very fine man. We have also lost the last WWII Medal of Honor winner. Hershel W. “Woody” Williams. He lived a full 98 years. Here is Williams’ Medal of Honor Citation.

  • Tom Hyland July 4, 2022, 8:31 AM

    Here’s an inspiring 5 minutes with a real American…. addressing a room of traitors.
    https://gab.com/PrayerAnon/posts/108588787798432835

    • ghostsniper July 4, 2022, 7:17 PM

      I’d like to have seen him rack a slide and start blowing heads.
      That’s what it’s coming to.
      That’s what it’ll take.

  • Wild, wild west July 4, 2022, 11:15 AM

    That three million is down to less than a quarter million today. Lest we forget……….