National Military Appreciation Month: Building Use and World Changes
All of his children were afraid of my father-in-law. He was stern, gruff, and spoke little. It was not the same with me. Not only was his son (the one I married) very much like him, but my father-in-law and I had the US Army in common. I had joined the Army joined the Army in 1973, at the end of the Vietnam War; my husband failed his physical and remained a dependent throughout my Army career. In 1975, I received a direct commission as an Army officer. This gave my father-in-law and me a common frame of reference for our military service. My father-in-law liked to talk to me about his WWII experiences as a Captain stationed in Alaska because even though I was a Vietnam Era veteran, I understood what those experiences meant to him and mean in general. At one point, he and my mother-in-law came to California for his birthday, just a couple of years before they both died. They wanted to visit Fort Ord, where he did his basic training, and they wanted to see the house they fir...