Because of Sept. 11, this is the first year in a long time that I've even given a second thought to Veterans Day. I hope to spend an hour or so of it with my favorite veteran, Vernon Hornung, who also happens to be my uncle and second father.

        At 91, he has seen every brutal dictator of the 20th century, and now he tries to understand the ones of the new millennium. But he can't figure out the idea behind such things as bioterrorism.

        In 1945, he returned to Hamilton with a four-year piece of his life missing. He was already in his 30s when his Uncle came calling after Pearl Harbor.

        Never once can I recall my uncle complaining about his military service or about field conditions, which can only be imagined in a nightmare. They were too horrid to try to explain.

        He told me this week that his biggest scare came on the way home from Europe, in a troop transport ship in the Atlantic. A storm tossed the ship like a toy.

        “Each time a giant wave would hit, we'd see what looked like a big hole and we'd fall into it,” he said. “In the very bottom of the ship, welding crews worked day and night to keep the hull from ripping apart in the storm. We all wondered if we'd survived the war just to drown on the trip back.”

        A few months earlier, his artillery group participated in the Battle of Bulge, Hitler's last desperate gamble to win World War II. My uncle stepped over hundreds of bodies of young American soldiers. The living grabbed the dead's blankets to protect themselves from the Ardennes' sub-zero temperatures.

        One night, my uncle tried to sleep in a truck cab but awakened just in time to realize his legs were starting to freeze.

        The older I get, the more I silently thank him for his sacrifice, for it enabled me and millions of other baby boomers to enjoy our childhoods in the 1950s and '60s.

        On Sunday, finally, I will tell him this: “Thank you for our freedoms.”

        HAMILTON — The 19th annual Tillmann Concert will be conducted at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 18 at St. Julie Billiart Church.

        The concert is underwritten by the Hamilton Community Foundation and the Tillmann Fund.

        This year, the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 50th anniversary. Musical director Paul Stanbery is planning a program that includes “Toward a New Life” by Josef Suk and Mozart's “Exsultate Jubilate.”

        The orchestra's board of trustees has also commissioned Dr. Philip Kiplow, the composer-in-residence at Northern Kentucky University, to write a piece for the concert. It is called “How Sweet the Sound.”

        Information: 863-1389.

        Randy McNutt's column appears on Saturday. Contact him at The Enquirer, 7700 Service Center Dr., West Chester, Ohio 45069. Telephone: 755-4158. Fax: 755-4150. E-mail: Rmcnutt@enquirer.com.

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