Just walked into Walmart ready to drop $250 I honestly couldn’t afford on a portable AC for my mobile home. While I’m standing there pricing a little 5,000 BTU unit, my second boss calls me. I told her what I was doing… and her husband immediately jumps on the phone: “Nope. Save your money. I’ve got one for you.” (They’re closing on a house with central air, so they don’t need it anymore.) I asked what he wanted for it. His reply? “Just come pick it up.” Y’all… I brought home a $500, 8,000 BTU LG that’s so cold it’s got me shivering in my living room right now. LG really does stand for “Life is Good.” Thank You Lord for showing up in the middle of a stressful season and reminding me that You see me.
#GodIsGood #Blessed #SmallActsOfKindness #FaithOverFear #GratefulHeart
Tonight, as I do every year at this time, I’ll be raising a glass to a scared young man, who 82 years ago was preparing to go ashore on the beaches of Normandy as part of an event code-named Operation Overlord.
D-Day.
I can’t imagine what was going through his mind. I’d be scared to death and I’m sure he was too. But in that first wave was a 21-year-old Private First Class from Henry County, VA by the name of Allen Homer Sink.
Fortunately, he would survive that initial wave, participate in battle until it ended in August, then come home to marry and raise a family of four, including two daughters after the war ended.
He would also become my father-in-law until his death in 2006.
His nickname for some reason was “Hank” and when I asked him how he got it, he said some guy in the Army said he “looked like a Hank.” From the time I first met him, he was a salt-of-the-earth man who was never afraid of anything. He was a carpenter by trade, and he’d stand up on the tallest roofs, grab bumblebees with his bare hands when they tried to persuade him to move elsewhere, and never be bothered by anything.
His hands were tough and leathery, but he was a softie. He spoiled his children, complained when my mother-in-law would gripe about something involving one of his alleged misdeeds, and always thought he was fooling everybody when he snuck around the back of the house and lit a cigarette, a habit everyone opposed but he could never part himself from.
He could talk your ear off for hours at a time, and I always suggested he become a greeter at Wal-Mart when he retired because then he could talk all day to strangers and none of them would – like his wife and daughters often did – tell him to be quiet for a few moments. Yet for all his love of talking, there was one subject he just wouldn’t discuss.
June 6, 1944. Omaha Beach.
In 1998, when he was 76 years old, the subject came up again. The movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out and the beginning was gruesome. Reviews said it was incredibly realistic to what really happened that day. I asked Hank if he wanted to go see it.
“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t ever want to see any of that again.”
He did offer that he remembered the night before when troops were loaded into the boats for the amphibious assault. He said it was raining and that once everyone was in place, they gave everybody ice cream and told them to try to get some sleep. Then the next thing he knew, they were waking everybody up telling them to stay low and head for the beach.
No, that doesn’t sound like somebody drugged the ice cream. Not at all.
That’s all he would say about the subject, and he never said another word about it until the final months of his life. Alzheimer’s would gradually rob him of his mind, and as his condition deteriorated, memories of the past would briefly spill out. One evening he thought I was his commanding officer and he was back at Normandy. It is the only time I ever saw him where he appeared to be scared. Ever.
It reminds me every day of something I had unknowingly taken for granted. The greatest generation did fight in and win World War II, then did incredible things over the next 50 to 60 years after the war. But many carried unspeakable memories from the War, ones they would never talk about and carry inside them to their graves. Those veterans lost a piece of themselves in battle they would never, ever, get back.
I mean, how can you at the tender age of 21 storm a beach, see friends die only a few feet from you, wonder each night if you will wake up alive the next morning and then return home a year later and try to pick up on the same normal life you had before you left? I told him once that after seeing “Saving Private Ryan”, I understood why he was never afraid of anything; after you’ve made it through something like that, everything else pales in comparison.
So tonight, I raise a glass to Hank and the 150,000-plus men, who like my father-in-law, were very young, very scared, and still charged that beach, paying a price that even for the survivors would last the rest of their days.
Rest In Peace...
I knew I was going to piss off the right people with this picture.
The “blacker than black” BLM crowd called me slurs.
The “white is right” CHUD-lickers called me slurs.
BUT… the rational, sensible people out there understood what I did and agreed. Which was directly what I wanted.
I’ll say it again: all lives matter.
Thank you all for being on this journey with me.
This is a great example of American spirit!
@iamrodneysmith
Early July 4th Happy Birthday Rodney!
America 250th Birthday 🇺🇸
Patriotic Celebration 1776 - 2026
@WhiteHouse@realDonaldTrump@VP
👇
🚨 OMG. A MASSIVE India H-1B visa fraud ring has just been busted...nearly 90% PERCENT of India's visa applications contain FRAUDULENT INFORMATION
100,000 THOUSAND counterfeit certificates have been seized 🤯
"Law enforcement in India claim it has uncovered a network of universities that produce fake degrees which were possibly used to obtain these high skilled H1B visas, including one school which allegedly stole over 36,000 fake degrees. It cost as little as $1,400 for one of those."
"And while these are supposed to be high skilled employees during almost all of Biden's time in office, 83% got junior or entry level positions."
This is INSANE! SHUT DOWN THE H-1B SCAM!
@KenPaxtonTX is now going after this in Texas 🔥
@kayleighmcenany@SatAmericaFNC
Perfectly said! It is inappropriate & harassment in both scenarios, each with their own agenda.
You have to ask yourself: why do drag queens & radical gender activists fight tooth & nail to work with & around children?
The Trump border wall. After little progress in the president's first term, and a dead stop during Joe Biden's, the wall is going up fast. And this time it seems to be attracting less opposition than the all-out war of earlier years. https://t.co/mwKU7JGq9C
Victor Davis Hanson: There Is No Ballot Integrity In California
Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on California's primary results and shares his thoughts on vote counting, mail-in ballots, and why some races can look very different weeks after Election Day.
“And so Spencer Pratt on Election Day won the election. But when this counting continues and continues and continues, and you almost get the impression that you have these union and activist groups, and they have all these ballots here, and they're all ready to go, and they're just waiting.”
Full episode: https://t.co/IF4rccoST7
@VDHanson
🚨BREAKING: Steve Hilton, who was placed in first place after election day for Governor of California, is now projected to fall into third place and be ELIMINATED!
This is voter fraud! We are witnessing 2020 all over again!