This is the weekend when we honor those in our Armed Services and other professions, who lived, fought and died, to protect our way of life here in the United States. I don't think we honor, or thank them enough. No matter how many parades and ceremonies there are - they ae not enough. An acquaintence of mine was killed in Viet Nam while I was in high school. Practically the whole of Willmar Senior HIgh turned out for his memorial.

More recently, several of my daughters frines, many of themarines, nad Special forces, have died - some in battle, some not. But, they died while serving to protec you and I. Two of them she went to school with. One she got to know through other servicemen. As a result of all those deaths, my daughter is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - becasue she cared so much about them, and feels the pain of their loss. .

There is at least one other person in my families lives, who is no longe with us. He did not die while in the service, but he fought to protect us just as those who did have. .

So, on this weekend, I want to do something I do not thank anyone has ever done – that is to thank my father for his service during World War II. Dr. (Captain) Roger Michels was a physician and surgeon, in the 101st Airborne, "the Screaming Eagles " of the Band of Brothers movie fame. He was a paratrooper who never talked about his service in the Army. I suspect it was because of what he felt and saw, as not only a physician devoted to saving lives and healing the sick and wounded, but also as a Christian, on the day when he entered the Jewish prison camp at Dachau, where he undoubtedly saw not only the sick, wounded, emaciated and starving Jews (who he treated as camp physician), but also the piles of naked, dead nodies of those who had been tortured and murdered in the gas chambers. That is the part he rarely if ever talked about; to me or to anyone else. Knowing him I'm sure it made him extremely sorrowful, but also extremely mad, if not enraged, that one group of people coul inflict such atrocities and murder, on another group of people - simply because they were percieved as different, and not of the same class as their captors and murderers were. I'm sure he did waht he could to make life easier for those who were left living - because that is just who he was - someone who cares about all people, no matter theri race, color skin, nationality, religious beliefs or ethnicity. They were all human beings to him; all the same, .

So, on thjis Memorial Day weekend - I'd like to say, "Thanks Dad, for your service to our country. And for being the wonderful person and humitarian that you were. You were the greatest person I have ever known. You were in fact, "bigger than life", as many others have put it. I hope I can be half the person you were.

You were, and always will be, a hero – in my heart and in my mind.

I love you,

your son. T.R.