Veterans Day, Family Legacy, and the Meaning of Service

For all their ills, the unexpected months of 2020 spent sitting at home with canceled plans offered the extra “time” many of us have always talked about. For some, it afforded us the time to finish the home improvement project we’ve been dreaming of or perfect the recipe we’ve long aimed to tackle, albeit with no one to share the finished product with. For me, a rushed evacuation from Central Asia in March and five subsequent months in my hometown in rural Southwest Wisconsin gave me an invaluable gift I had long neglected — time with extended family. 

I spent many July afternoons sitting outside with my grandma, grandpa, and great aunts. We sat, laughed, and ate pie as my aunt Linda, the family historian, told me everything possible about our family history. Imagine my shock when I discovered, after twenty-two years of believing I was German, that my ancestors actually came from Cornwall! 

Although this time spent together was indispensable, the greatest learning moment for me came in a different format. One day my grandma left me a folder stuffed full of letters, all penned by her mom, my great grandmother. The contents of those letters made me smile, laugh, cry, and most importantly, deserve to be shared with the world. 

During a summer of great challenges, social unrest, and questioning American identity, the letters reminded me just what we are fighting for when we ask this country to live up to its founding principles of liberty and justice for all, and most importantly, of the everyday Americans who left their families, traversed oceans and nations, and ensured that you, I, and every American have these liberties still today. This Veterans Day, I share the story of my great grandparents, Maurice and Anne Leffler. 

My great grandmother Anne Leffler was an absolute force. She grew up in rural Wisconsin during the Great Depression, was Valedictorian of her high school class, raised eight kids (two and a half while her husband was serving in WWII), and was the matriarch every family dreams of. I’ve been told my whole life how much I resemble my great grandmother, but I think it’s much too gracious to compare me to this courageous and incredible woman. 

Later in life, she became a librarian and used to drive the book mobile around Southwest Wisconsin. In so many ways, she reminds me of Barbara Bush, whom she also idolized. Part of her literary legacy was writing letters to her children about her childhood, extraordinary love with my great grandfather, and other life experiences, as she had an affinity for history and knew the value of sharing family stories. 

On Veterans Day (Armistice Day to her) 1991, my great grandma penned a letter to her children. The letter, written on a typewriter, described the personal experiences of my great grandparents during WWII. Born in 1921, my great grandmother was just twenty years old at the onset of the war.

“During the war years people with family members in service usually displayed a blue star in their window for each one. If the blue star was changed to a gold one, that meant the boy had been killed. As more and more gold stars appeared, the war seemed to come closer to us,” she wrote. Having spent a lot of time in Russia and the post-Soviet space, I’ve studied, read, and watched a multitude of accounts on the war, as these countries have been very cognizant of keeping the memories and traumatic losses from the war alive. This account by my great grandma gave me a visual of how the war played out in my hometown, which was previously hard for me to imagine. 

Based on her words, she had a similar reaction. “It seemed unreal that these kids, several years younger than us, who had never been far from the farm or our small town should die in such far away places,” my great grandmother wrote. My great grandparents were part of this story — ordinary Americans who answered the call and played an extraordinary role in history. At the onset of the war, they were newlyweds and young parents living on a small farm and running the milk route in Fennimore, Wisconsin, where generations of my family stayed and I myself grew up. 

When her husband was drafted — on Victory in Europe Day! — my great grandmother was already the mother of two young children with a third on the way. After completing training at Fort Riley in Kansas, traveling to Japan, and working on post-war cleanup in Japan and the Pacific, my great grandfather found out on the day after Christmas that he was eligible to come home early after the birth of his third child.

He arrived home in mid-January 1946, and woke up at 4 a.m. the next morning to run the milk route. Without a complaint or a single day off, he returned home from war and went about his regular business. It truly seems unfathomable today.

I found myself laughing out loud many times while reading her account, but probably no time more than during this quip by my great grandmother:

“He’d been on a nice ocean voyage and had seen the world and I was damn tired. So, it was either him or me, and I’d let him have the honor — that was only fair,” regarding him waking up to complete the milk route the morning after returning home from the war. 

How the Greatest Generation, just kids at the time, were able to meet their challenges with grace, valor, and courage is beyond me. As my grandma wrote, “I was getting close to feeling sorry for myself, but I did my ‘spit in the eye of the devil’ act and toughed it out.” My great grandparents’ story both humbled me and put my generation’s small sacrifices during the COVID-19 pandemic into perspective for me. 

In the words of my great grandmother Anne Leffler, “We were all part of a great national crisis that brought all Americans together in a common cause in which we all tried to do our part, however small. Your dad [Maurice Leffler], like most of the other GIs, went to service when called, did what had to be done, came home as soon as possible, and got on with life without much fanfare.” 

The Greatest Generation, often younger than I am right now, sacrificed everything for our country and our world. This Veterans Day, we honor those Americans who selflessly served to ensure that this land continues to be a beacon of freedom for all. Even more so, we must share their stories, for through them we can keep family legacies and historical memory alive. In addition, these shared stories and sense of service can help to keep our current challenges in perspective.