Alva Review-Courier -

For nearly 25 years, I’ve covered the Alva Middle School’s Veterans Day assembly. Each year a new slate of bright, well dressed, talented young students conduct the entire program with professionalism.

Videos, music and speeches show the veterans that their efforts are still appreciated.

The past few years, it’s become painfully clear that faces disappear between celebrations.

This year for the first time in my memory, I saw no World War II veterans. They’ve all either passed from this earthly battlefield to the next, or are too frail to attend.

In earlier years, there were veterans you could...