Veterans' Letters Home Bring Chills on Memorial Day (Video)

In online journalism, where a minute-old Tweet is "so 10 minutes ago,'' posting a Memorial Day video on June 1 is like writing about Christmas in February.

So, while I write this column to some degree as a mea culpa for not getting it on the site earlier, I really just wanted the chance to shed my impartiality, and share with you that Monday's 80-plus degree day failed to thwart goosebumps as La Cañada kids read letters from veterans clear back to Valley Forge.

One after another, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts stood at a podium in and read words penned during the Revolutionary, Civil, Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and both World wars. Thoughts inked by [mostly] young men trying to grasp the horror of what they were seeing, and counting the days until reality morphed into memory.

"Why do I have to be the one to tell someone to do something that may get him killed?'' the Girl Scout read from First Lt. Dean Allen's letter to his wife, Joyce, that he wrote from Guadalcanal. 

The Girl Scout continued.

"Four days later, Dean Allen stepped on a land mine and was killed.''

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, as if to salute the author and all veterans who fought and survived situations that I'll only ever know as stories on a page. Thank you. 

(And hats off to the for putting together such a moving Memorial Day Service.)