Writers Tricks of the Trade ISSUE 1, VOLUME 9 | Page 13

L IFE S TORIES BY K EITH B ETTINGER
A MONG THE S HADOWS AND S TONES
K EITH B ETTINGER WRITES STORIES THAT TOUCH YOUR HEART . T HIS YEAR M AY 27 MARKS M EMORIAL DAY , AND
NO STORY COULD BE MORE APPROPRIATE FOR THIS ISSUE THAN THIS ONE .
I
don’t know if my feelings and priorities
about Memorial Day were different in
1999 because the holiday fell on May
31, as it used to in the past. Maybe, it was
the impending calendar change to the new
millennium. It might have been that my
own 50th birthday was approaching, arriv-
ing right after the millennium change. That
could have made me more reflective as I
approached my own half century. It also
could have been that during the previous
year, I saw the movie Saving Private Ryan.
When I walked out of the theater, I was
emotionally exhausted. I came away saying,
"Every politician should have to watch this
film, before he can vote to send someone
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE
else's child off to war." Maybe my observa-
tions were distorted when I looked at Viet
Nam veterans. I thought to myself how old
they appeared to be, and suddenly, I real-
ized these are the American heroes of my
generation.
I do know that my father and my uncle
are both veterans. They entered the service
near the end of World War II, and at the
time my uncle was in his 80s and my father
had recently passed away at 80. The other
veterans from World War II are older and it
just seems that all the sacrifices of their
generation are being forgotten as time
passes all of us by.
My wife and I talked before that holiday
P AGE 8
S PRING 2019