The Norman Rockwell classic, Freedom From Want, speaks volumes of the bounty that we have here in America. Even the poorest of the poor here are far richer than much of the rest of the world. Obesity is a far greater problem in America than is hunger. We have so much to be thankful for.

Do we really understand where our blessings come from? How many times do we off-handedly say “God bless you” without giving any thought to the fact that God HAS richly blessed us.

I want to point out one of the reasons that we have the freedom to celebrate Thanksgiving to our God – the men who have fought and died trying to preserve our freedom. As I was going through some of my father’s papers to clean up for our Thanksgiving Day dinner, I found a reminder of the sacrifice that generations past have made. This is the Thanksgiving Dinner menu for those aboard the U.S.S. Cumberland Sound, AV-17 in 1944 – somewhere in the Pacific, very far from home.


Part of the crew of the U.S.S. Cumberland Sound, AV-17. My father is the officer in the front row, wearing the cap, on the right.

When my father died, I inherited what is probably the largest collection of photos of and about the USS Cumberland Sound in existence. This is the web site that I created to share those photos.