Veterans Day 2009

One of my most treasured possessions is a textbook from Jack Marshall's senior year at Centenary College of Louisiana. The book, “Advertising Procedure,” sits on a shelf near my computer here in New York City. I find myself picking it up fairly often, flipping through the pages with their illustrations of what now would be considered classic advertising. For some reason, the fragile yellow pages and my father's carefully scripted margin notes always give me a strong sense of his everlasting presence in my life.

At the end of Chapter 11 in Dad's book, there is a handwritten assignment dated “12/5/41” with a notation to read certain pages by “12/8/41.” I guess as he was studying that weekend and completing that assignment, his world changed forever, because that Sunday as we all know, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and a few short months later Jack Marshall and many of his classmates were thousands of miles from home, in Europe and Asia, fighting for the freedoms we continue to enjoy as Americans today.

My father, John Wilcox Marshall Jr. (known to all as "Jack"), graduated from Centenary in May of 1942 and, barely 21 years old, immediately joined the Navy. By the summer of 1943, he was on board the USS Mullany when the destroyer was commissioned in San Francisco and steamed into World War II in the Pacific Ocean. The photo above shows Dad, by now about 22, standing second from left, and other officers on the Mullany sometime in 1943.


More than 20 years later, my oldest brother, John Wilcox Marshall III (above, at bottom of airplane steps, in a picture taken by Jack Marshall), followed his father into the Navy, serving aboard the guided missile cruiser USS Galveston during the Vietnam War. Though the circumstances of John's enlistment and the war itself were far different from our father's service, I know my brother too believed in the importance of fulfilling his duty to serve our country.

The newsman Tom Brokaw has written a book calling Jack Marshall and his contemporaries "The Greatest Generation." Not only for their service in World War II but also for their relentless hard work and optimism building America into an even greater nation in the years that followed. I have many friends whose fathers also served in World War II. Over the years, those friends and I have shared memories of our dads, and the qualities and values we know they gave our families and our lives.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that about 2 million veterans of World War II still are living, but they are dying at a rate of about 1,000 per day. All are expected to be gone by 2020.

Jack Marshall came home from World War II, met and married my mother, and together they raised four children in what for me was a wonderful, happy and supportive environment. Dad was not perfect, but he loved his family and his country. My father died far too young, at the age of 55, in 1976. I still miss him every day.

On Veterans Day 2009, I want to publicly express my gratitude to my father John W. Marshall Jr., my brother John Marshall III, my nephew Andrew John Marshall (John's son, an Air Force B-52 navigation officer) and all of the men and women who ever have served or now are serving in the armed forces of the United States of America.

Thank you for your service to our country!

–Tom Marshall, New York City