Have you thanked a veteran yet in May? We have had four official chances to do so this month: VE Day on May 8, Armed Forces Day on May 16, Memorial Day (observed) on May 25, and today, Memorial Day (traditional), May 30. This posting is dedicated to veterans that I have known, especially my father, Kenneth Alvin McCart, who was stationed in Hawaii with the U.S. Army on December 7, 1941, and who later retired from the Army, and those that I have not had the pleasure of meeting. Thank you for serving our country.
I didn’t manage to thank a vet on VE Day this year, but I was privileged to be waiting for my flight back from Baltimore to Kansas City the morning of Armed Forces Day this year (for the story about why I was in Baltimore, click here). Along with a couple of hundred other travelers waiting for their flights at various gates at BWI, I stood and clapped and called out thank you to dozens of WWII vets as they were arriving courtesy of Honor Flight to go see their memorial, the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC. If you have not yet visited the WWII Memorial, do so. It is breathtaking.
On Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, I stood and clapped and cheered and thanked veterans along with the other 50,000 or so at the Celebration at the Station, down the hill from the Liberty Memorial and the official National World War I Museum, where my friends and I enjoyed my homemade vegan fudge. The next day, Memorial Day observed, I was able to thank a vet in person when an old friend whom I have known for more than 30 years, since we worked together at Fort Leavenworth, came over for lunch. She is a retired Army Reserve/National Guard lieutenant colonel and her husband is a former Marine. She still works at Fort Leavenworth as a civilian and had Monday off, so we did lunch. She’s a good sport about trying out my vegan dishes, so I served vegetarian hot dogs in blankets with yellow mustard, sliced fresh tomatoes, Lipton summer peach tea, and sliced fresh strawberries macerated with Florida Crystals organic sugar and topped with vanilla soy yogurt. The recipe for the “oinker-free pup in a puff that’ll leave you and the kiddies stuffed,” according to the lead-in to the recipe, is in The Compassionate Cook, a cookbook by PETA and Ingrid Newkirk. I found all of the ingredients, many of them conveniently on sale, at my local Walmart and Whole Foods at 91st and Metcalf in Overland Park.
I am grateful to U.S. veterans for helping to keep our country free for many, many reasons, not the least of which is so that I could choose to live in peace as a vegan.
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