April 30th

Today is April 30th, a truly significant day for both me personally and for the United States.  On April 30th, 1975 my parents (Nelson and Mary, as seen in the photograph above) and I were staying in Jensen Beach, Florida in a small cottage right on the Intercoastal Waterway.  We had driven the long way way down from Chicago, stopping at Biloxi, Mississippi  and then following the Gulf Coast and going across Florida.   We were visiting my Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie, who were living at a condo complex in Stuart, Florida, to see it my parents might want to retire there.  They did indeed, and although my father lived only another 8 years, my mother went on to live there for almost 30, and the condo is still in the family.  Hopefully it always will be. But that day, back in that cottage on the Intercoastal, I listened to the fall of Saigon on the radio, and it seemed otherworldly.  All the lives lost in that war, all the lives destroyed, and all for nothing. Definitely a day to remember, and a lesson never to be forgotten.