cr8crshr
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- Feb 13, 2009
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1. Be informed. Helen Ann Langmade, a proud Army wife (now widowed), remembers Roosevelt’s fireside chats as if they were yesterday. Her then-boyfriend, Charlie (they’d marry after his return from the Second World War), had just deployed and she was home in Newport Beach, California. “Everyone listened,” she recalls. “The president was on the radio. You can’t imagine how fast everyone rallied around. We were tuned in all day long.”
No matter how you feel about our current leaders, we have a responsibility to understand our foreign policy; we are justified in wanting to know what kind of situation we’re sending our spouses into. We have a right to question what it is we, as military families, are signing up for, over and over again, to fight for and defend.
2. Be engaged. Regardless of where you stand politically, our troops need our unwavering support. Helen Ann remembers the community standing behind the war efforts. “We had a victory garden in my parents’ backyard, and everyone had their ration cards. Gas was rationed. Meat was scarce, sugar was rationed. You could only buy so much sugar per quarter.” While our days of planting victory gardens may be gone, there are so many ways to get involved on the homefront. From volunteering at a VA hospital (check with your local VA hospital for details) to donating to a USO, showing support of our military partners is felt far beyond what we are able to touch.
3. Be vigilant. By now, you’ve hopefully seen the warnings to scrub your social media accounts. With ongoing threats to military members and their families, it’s imperative that we maintain situational awareness. Helen Ann recalls the precautions they were mandated to take because her family’s home faced the Pacific Ocean. “We had air wardens looking at the house every night. If they could see any light coming from beneath the blackout shades, we’d get a knock on the door. The lampposts were painted black. There was darkness as far as you could see. I get chills up my spine just thinking about how dark it was.”
It feels like dark times now, too. Ensuring your personal safety and that of your service member is paramount. Be aware of your surroundings and pay attention to the news.
4. Have hope. Without promise for a better future because of the battles we fight today, we are lost. Helen Ann assures me that it’s normal to worry, but that we have to keep the homefires burning. “Everyone was affected. Everyone knew someone fighting. But everyone was hopeful, too. We knew we were fighting for a better world.”
In President Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” chat, he echoed her sentiments. “We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope — hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future.”
And so we remain. Hopeful for these wars to end, hopeful that our families are protected, and hopeful that one day, our generation, too, will be regarded as great as Helen Ann and hers.
It has to start with us.
No matter how you feel about our current leaders, we have a responsibility to understand our foreign policy; we are justified in wanting to know what kind of situation we’re sending our spouses into. We have a right to question what it is we, as military families, are signing up for, over and over again, to fight for and defend.
2. Be engaged. Regardless of where you stand politically, our troops need our unwavering support. Helen Ann remembers the community standing behind the war efforts. “We had a victory garden in my parents’ backyard, and everyone had their ration cards. Gas was rationed. Meat was scarce, sugar was rationed. You could only buy so much sugar per quarter.” While our days of planting victory gardens may be gone, there are so many ways to get involved on the homefront. From volunteering at a VA hospital (check with your local VA hospital for details) to donating to a USO, showing support of our military partners is felt far beyond what we are able to touch.
3. Be vigilant. By now, you’ve hopefully seen the warnings to scrub your social media accounts. With ongoing threats to military members and their families, it’s imperative that we maintain situational awareness. Helen Ann recalls the precautions they were mandated to take because her family’s home faced the Pacific Ocean. “We had air wardens looking at the house every night. If they could see any light coming from beneath the blackout shades, we’d get a knock on the door. The lampposts were painted black. There was darkness as far as you could see. I get chills up my spine just thinking about how dark it was.”
It feels like dark times now, too. Ensuring your personal safety and that of your service member is paramount. Be aware of your surroundings and pay attention to the news.
4. Have hope. Without promise for a better future because of the battles we fight today, we are lost. Helen Ann assures me that it’s normal to worry, but that we have to keep the homefires burning. “Everyone was affected. Everyone knew someone fighting. But everyone was hopeful, too. We knew we were fighting for a better world.”
In President Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” chat, he echoed her sentiments. “We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope — hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future.”
And so we remain. Hopeful for these wars to end, hopeful that our families are protected, and hopeful that one day, our generation, too, will be regarded as great as Helen Ann and hers.
It has to start with us.
