Tag: Richard Pender
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Opinion: A veteran’s thoughts about Christmas Eve
As I sit now in my living room, listening to Christmas songs, my mind drifts back many years as I recall our practices on Christmas Eve. In our denomination we didn’t eat meat on Christmas Eve before church services. My mother usually made fish cakes using Gorton’s shredded cod in a can. She added mashed…
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Opinion: Thanksgiving is a time to build memories
“We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing.” I enjoy all the holidays when the family gathers together. But, Thanksgiving is special. It isn’t only lots of good food, it also is a lot of good conversation from a lot of good people. As a young boy in the pre-war era, I remember Thanksgiving at…
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Opinion: Let Freedom Ring
The Japanese war ministers thought they would bring the naval power of the U.S. to its knees by bombing and destroying the American dreadnoughts moored on Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In their eyes, the attack of Dec. 7, 1941, was successful. While the powerful battleships of the U.S. fleet were compromised, the Japanese…
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Opinion: The birth of our nation – we must protect the freedom we have
In Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, the delegates to the Second Continental Congress ratified a declaration of the delegates called the Declaration of Independence. The purpose of this declaration was to set forth the grievances the colonies had against the king and crown in their governance of the colonies. Among other things, the delegates notified…
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Opinion: Wartime footing vs. coronavirus
Befitting his position as a member of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals while attending Harvard, Governor Phil Murphy, in a recent TV appearance, dramatically announced that we are fighting a war against the coronavirus. The governor never lived and experienced a wartime America. The virus is serious and is something we must ward off. But the…
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Opinion: Basking in the sun of old ball fields now gone
Last week I had a birthday. Not unusual since everybody has one a year. When you hit the mid-eighties, each birthday makes one realize that the trip ahead is much less than the trip already traveled. Going past that midpoint assures the inevitable is not too far ahead. Such thoughts can have a depressing effect…
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To Serve & Honor: The 1920s
One hundred years ago we were entering the second decade of the 20th century. The 1920s would become known as the Roaring Twenties. It was a decade of flapper dresses and raccoon fur coats and boisterous behavior. For many years, groups like the Woman’s Temperance League, the Anti-Saloon League and others lobbied…
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V-J Day: War is over
The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought an immediate response from the Emperor of Japan. He ordered his country’s forces to cease the war and surrender. Of course, stopping a war the magnitude of the Pacific War was not instantaneous. There was no “stop” button to push. Local commanders all over…
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Happy birthday America
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a place called America. It was a vast wilderness between two great oceans. Some indigenous people, who lived off the land, inhabited it and there were no great cities or highways. When explorers from the empires in Europe came here, they claimed portions of the…