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Two More Heroes - My Brothers in Law
If there's anything that can be said about my family it's the fact that we have our share of patriots in it. Whether you want to talk about my immediate family or my in-laws, there are plenty of soldiers to go around.

I have two brothers in law. One was Alan, who left home immediately after finishing high school to accept an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy. If you ask him, he will tell you that he joined the Air Force for the free education, but that would only be part of the story. Having also had a father who was an Air Force officer, he joined because he wanted to learn to fly. But there's another reason too: he wanted to do something that he had wanted to do his entire life, which is to fly. 

After he was graduated from the Academy, Alan went to flight school, and upon completion, he was assigned to a base in So Korea. When he came home, Alan served at a number of installations before he was given an opportunity to help run a company that was started by his father-in-law, which he took. 

As a result, he didn't have the stresses of finding a job when he left the service, but that wasn't the point. To a great degree, he never left the service, since from that point until today, you never hear about his civilian career. If you look in his office all you will see are mementos of his service days and his life of flight during and after his military career. 

You will never catch him complaining about the military, because he is deeply cognizant of what the Air Force gave him, and he honors that every day. That makes him a hero in my book, as well as the father in law who knew the opportunity he had to hire a USA hero. 

My other brother-in-law, Mike, originally joined the Army because he was drafted. Fortunately, or unfortunately -- depending on when in his life he talked to you -- his duty in the Army went from something his country ordered him to do to something that he loved and was well rewarded for it. 

After a short stint in training, he was off to Vietnam, where he repaired radios. That might sound like a kooshy assignment to most people, but to be barely 18, shipped off to a war zone where he knew nobody, and stayed to complete he assigned job in an honorable way, makes him, and a lot of other people like him, heroes in my book.

Just like a lot of people, once Mike got into the Army, he found that he liked the opportunities it presented him. There were chances to learn valuable skills, structure, and much more that made him decide that it was the career for him. But if you think that the military is all give, give, give, you would be wrong. 

At the end of his career, not only did he turn over his stripes to become an officer, but he received the most plum assignment anyone could have, in the communications office of the White House to join become what is called the WACTO, the White House Communications Travel Officer, which is the person who is assigned to the President to travel wherever he was going to set up the infrastructure for his visit. And until the President left a location, Mike stayed right there with him. It didn't matter whether the President was in a foreign country or at Camp David or his own home, Mike was right there along with him.

Whenever a soldier can write on a resume that his last tour of duty was the White House, it's a good thing, but the truth be told, Mike's being able to say that was a big reward for all of the hard work that he put into doing what he did. 

It paid off well for him after he retired from the Army, and several employers knew to hire a USA hero, but even now in retirement, he can look back on a career where he did a lot of good, and can take pride in the fact that he served his country well.
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