BEST Veterans Day EVER

This past Friday, instead of going to work, I went to the DC Veterans Hospital instead and participated in a work sponsored community service event. The Veterans History Project set each volunteer up to record the stories of veterans, which will be included in the American Folk Life Collection at the Library of Congress. That's right, very soon, you too will be able to request "Kimmmm on Tape" through the Library of Congress.

Anyway, each of us got paired up with our very own real live veteran to tape record for the collection. I was really nervous going into this because I was worried that I would be paired up with an extremely young person, or that I wouldn't know what to say. Fortunately, my veteran was a talkative man who had served in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. We had a really good conversation that went all over the place including race relations in DC, how DC has changed in the past 60 years, real estate prices, nightclubs, bars, women, living overseas, how his family ran a blackmarket of ration coupons during WW2, actual combat in the Korean War, corned beef and cabbage (his first meal in the military) and his family.

While he was telling me about how afraid he was for his 20 year old son, who is stationed in Iraq until June, he started crying. My eyes welled up too.

Even though I've participated in various community service type events, through work and otherwise, this was probably one of the most eye opening experiences that I've had in quite some time.

Happy Belated Veterans Day.