Veterans Day thoughts

 I started my career in education working at a public school in southern California. I would go onto to spend 19 years working for that school district. I also attended school in the same general area, so I was quite familiar and comfortable with school holidays in that region.

In 2016, I moved about 1,000 miles away from that area, to a much smaller city, Laramie, Wyoming. I secured a job there working for the local school district as a computer technician. As you can imagine, it was a change that required some getting used to. I was so knowledgeable about how things worked in my California district and who to go with my questions.

One of the differences that I was never able to understand was how these school districts differed in their observance of Veterans Day. In both the district I grew up going to school at and the district I spent most of my career at, the holiday was a day off. It was a welcome little break after the initial couple of months of school, and it gave students, families, and staff an opportunity to honor our American veterans.

I have a fond memory of one year a history teacher I worked with and I met up at the March Field Air Museum, to check out our local military aviation history.

March Field Air Museum and
the engine of their SR-71 Blackbird

I'm getting a little sidetracked from the point of  this  post. When I moved  to Laramie, I discovered that the district did not observe Veterans Day with a day off for all. It seemed really odd to me: we were located close by to a US Air Force Base (F.E.Warren AFB) and the community is really proud of the U.S. military and the veterans. The fact that Veterans Day wasn't observed seemed quite odd. 

With my move to Wisconsin and now working for a school district, I found that this area also didn't observe the holiday like it was in California. I guess I could understand more here, because we don't have a large military base nearby. The only presence that I can think of is the Wisconsin Air National Guard at Truax Field in Madison. 

Now that I think about it, the area in California that I grew up in had many military bases nearby. Most of these bases  are closed, but we had Norton AFB, March AFB, George AFB, and Edwards AFB. Down in the San Diego area there was the Miramar Naval Base, and further north in the desert was the China Lake Naval Base. I guess it's no wonder that I gained a fascination with airplanes!