Thursday

So this is May of 1971 on the ND campus immediately after my commissioning ceremony.  The more interesting pic is the one of Mother and Daddy which I must have taken right after the one of me alone was snapped. 

Daddy would have been just over age 61 as of my graduation/commissioning, and Mother would have been 63.  I thought that they were really old at the time.

(The girl in the middle was a good friend from St. Mary's whom I visited in New Orleans that Summer, and I don't think ever saw again.)

More later after the noon ceremony at The Arsenal.

BCOT

UPDATE:  The presentation over at the Rock Island Arsensal National Cemetery was appropriately understated.  Attended by a small crowd of perhaps 150 or so.  Almost a little Mass-like in that the agenda took things through a very standard sequence of welcome, invocation, song, speeches, taps and adjournment. 25 minutes tops.  No helicopter flower drops, but the closing speaker did note that the Thunderbirds did a fly-over in silent mode during Taps. 

My friend and fellow veteran Bill C was at the program (as he is most years).  He's one of my few local contemporaries in the professions who completed active military service.  In his case, he was in the Army Reserves and did the Weekend Warrier thing for 30 years.  He was also deployed for a year to the Middle East for the first Gulf War in the early '90's.  Good guy, even for a lawyer.

Maybe a little more here later after my run.

BCOT