Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

I was in the high school this morning when they held a moment of silence for Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.  After the silence I opened up my iPad to show two folks a picture of my great uncle that perished on the USS Arizona.

After that I headed to the car to get to the office.  On my brief drive my thoughts jumped around to a series of things and landed on my grandfather.  I was pretty close to him.  He would take me camping, hunting, and always challenged my math skills.  As a cropduster he thought it important I needed to know liquid measurements and how to manipulate portions depending on how much water need to be loaded in the airplane.  Of course, I worked loading the plane and rode with him until I got too big to sit on his lap.

This morning, though, I realized that in all the conversations I had with him I can't recall him ever talking about his brother, my great uncle, that perished on the USS Arizona during the Pearl Harbor bombing.  My grandfather would have been around 11 years old when his brother died.

On this Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day I find myself wondering what type of person my great uncle was.  Given his sacrifice, I know him only as a hero, just like my grandfather.