Armed Forces Day

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of attending the Bremerton Armed Forces Day parade. What a great parade. For nearly two and half hours there was non stop action as one entry after another passed in front of the kids and I. They say that the Bremerton parade is the largest in the country. The parade was led off by a joint services color guard followed by the "I" corps band from Ft. Lewis. The military grand marshall was COMSUBPAC (the two star admiral in charge of all the Pacific Ocean submarines). The civilian grand marshall was Sgt. John D. (Bud) Hawk, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from WW II. Bud is a longtime Bremerton resident and is a fixture in the annual parade. There were many other bands, military groups, general entrants, very cool. One of the highlights was a flyover from a C-17 from the Air Force base at McChord. About the only thing in the parade that I didn't like was the Shriner/Freemason entries. They must have been going by for 10-15 minutes. They wear their pseudo arabian outfits and play kazoos, bang cymbols and drums, and generally produce a sound that is as silly and annoying as seeing a bunch of 65+ year old men wearing Fred Flintstone poohbah hats riding on mopeds doing tricks. Whatever...
My favorite thing from the parade would have to be what my daughter said to me after it was over. She told me how proud she was to be an American and how when the jet flew over when all the soldiers were marching by it made her cry for love of her country. God Bless America.

I'd just like to say thank you to all those people I know in the Armed Forces and to the veterans. And I especially honor those Americans that have fallen in the service of our country. Now, be a good American and go read the Gettysburg Address.