{"id":16495,"date":"2010-01-06T05:54:36","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T10:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=16495"},"modified":"2010-01-06T08:10:22","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T13:10:22","slug":"never-prouder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=16495","title":{"rendered":"Never prouder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"paul-arrives\"<\/a>
\nLast night we went to pick up our son upon his return from Afghanistan. We easily found the gate where he would arrive because there was a crowd of Baltimorans waving flags and clapping for our returning soldiers and airmen.<\/p>\n

I know, I’ve written about it before and posted pictures of the folks who take a few minutes out of their lives occasionally to crowd around the planeloads of weary military members after their long flights home, but being a parent of one of those troops put a whole new perspective on it.<\/p>\n

Mostly, I was shocked that in deep blue Maryland, there are still some folks who care. I was never prouder of my country than I was last night at the sight of back clapping and hugs from complete strangers to our weary troops.<\/p>\n

\"welcome-home2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If any of the folks who happened to be at the international gate last night around 9PM at BWI ever read this, I want you to know that at least one family is grateful and hopeful from your presence. Just by being there, you brought tears to my wife’s eyes and it was hard for this old infantryman to hold my own back. Still.<\/p>\n

After googling a little bit, I discovered that the organization is “Operation Welcome Home Maryland<\/a>” I took a couple of pictures and if I can figure out to get them out of my phone, I’ll add them to this post. In the meantime, here’s an article about them from the Baltimore Sun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This year is looking so much better than the last.<\/p>\n

\"welcome-home1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks to Southern Democrat for helping me get these pictures to you from my POS phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night we went to pick up our son upon his return from Afghanistan. We easily … Never prouder<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-support-the-troops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}