Since I have moved over to a new blog I was thinking about what posts I really wanted to hold onto. There is a lot of stuff on the old blog that was good, and that I eventually want to move over to this new blog. I’ll be sorting through them slowly, but it will take me a while as there are over 400 articles on the old blog.
This is one post that I was thinking about today that I wanted to move to this new web-site.
I wrote this original article in July 2005. About a year after I wrote it Tamara’s Pop had a stroke, which has left him in a weakened physical state, and with dementia. He has since been admitted to a nursing home and just isn’t the man that he was when I first wrote this article …
I just got back from having lunch with Tamara’s Pop, her Mum’s father. I asked him a lot of questions, and got a lot of amazing answers. I can’t help but think about how much our generation owes to their generation.
His Dad was a WWI veteran who instilled some amazing values into Tamara’s Pop. During the Great Depression in the 30s he left school after grade 7 to go to work and help support the family. He started out there as a messenger boy in a hose fitting company. When he retired in the late 70’s he was the manager at the Adelaide Postal Exchange, with over 700 employees that he was responsible. I already respected him a lot, but that respect grew as I sat and just listened to some of his stories.
Pop joined up with what would now probably be the Australian Reserve Forces in 1938 as soon as he could, at 16. He said that in ’38 they thought that there was a possibility of an upcoming conflict. As soon as he turned 19 he joined the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) and was put into the Signals Corp as he had taught himself mores code by the time he was 10.
How do you think our generation respond during a time like that? Would we sign up, or would we run? Does our generation still have the same sense of values and responsibility that his generation did?
He taught me a lot today as we spoke and I could probably write for pages. I wish that I had some more time with him but they are heading back to Adelaide tomorrow, but I am very grateful for the hour that we had today.We owe so much to the generation before us, but we don’t acknowledge it enough. We don’t show them the respect that they deserve. We don’t know the hardships that they went through so that we could have it as easy as we do now.
The VP60 (Victory in the Pacific – 60 years) Celebrations are coming up here in Townsville this month. There aren’t many of the veterans left and we can’t forget what they and the generations before them have done for us…