Veterans Day 2026!

Today is Veterans Day, a holiday that began back in 1919 as Armistice Day, which celebrated the end of World War I. That horrific conflict, ironically called "the war to end all wars," ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. And in 1954, the day became Veterans Day, a national holiday that would honor all war veterans, living and dead, to be celebrated on Armistice Day, and those ranks of veterans included my father Nelson, who served during World War II. My father was a dentist, and as the story goes, he and his friend Ed were listening to a Northwestern University football game on the radio in the fall of 1943 when he got a telegram telling him that he had been drafted. At the age of 34, he probably thought he was home free, but no. Ed, also a dentist, thought that was very funny, until he got home and found out that he had been drafted, too. My father wound up being sent to Okinawa, while his friend Ed went to Paris. The Hoyt family luck has never changed throughout the generations. My father was forced by his parents to become a dentist, and he just hated it. My mother Mary once told me that my dad actually liked his time in the army, fighting teeth on Okinawa, since it was a break in having to practice that career back in Chicago. He can be seen in the photograph above sitting in the back row, third from the right. In any case, he came home in the fall of 1947 and after my father, mother, and sister Susan lived with my mother's parents for what was no doubt a fun-filled year and a half, they bought and moved into the house in the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago where I would grow up. My mother was so happy to finally have a place of her own that she hated to leave it, even to go on vacations. And that is today's Veterans Day story. No thanks necessary.