Maj. Brannon exemplifies the Greatest Generation

For the past nine years the Bella Vista Patriots have hosted the 4th of July Patriot Parade in the Sugar Creek Shopping Center. We do it to celebrate Independence Day and we do that by honoring our past and present military personnel. This year's parade will begin at 9:30 a.m. with pre-parade entertainment and the parade march will kickoff at 10.

Each year we select a World War II veteran to be our grand marshal. The reason is obvious that our time is running out to have this opportunity to thank them for literally stepping up to the plate and saving all of us from tyranny. We interview each grand marshal and that write-up is converted to a DVD which is given to the grandchildren so they will know who their grandpa was. It also winds up in the WW II archives in Washington, D.C., so it is available to anyone.

This year's grand marshal is Maj. George Brannon. In my interviewing Maj. Brannon, he said he was 18 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Upon graduation from Tipton, (Okla.) High School, George said, like other young men his age, he was anxious to strike back. He had always wanted to fly, so he volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corp Flight School. Upon graduation from flight school he wanted to be a combat fighter pilot.

Sometimes, people not familiar with the military don't realize that for every 10 military personnel it takes nine individuals to train, supply and support the one that is in actual combat. The assignment you get is strictly a roll of the dice. Everyone who has ever donned a military uniform recognizes that by putting on the uniform it is an unofficial agreement that you may one day have to sacrifice your life for the cause of freedom. So it was with Maj. Brannon. He spent his years training others how to fly single-engine fighter planes. The war ended and George's wishes to be an active combat fighter pilot did not materialize during WW II, but he can take comfort in knowing that his instructions to others probably led to their success in air battles and may have saved many of their lives.

After WW II, George stayed in the military. As a pilot of multi-engine aircrafts, he was stationed in Guam. In the Vietnam War he flew supply missions in and out of Vietnam. He said that many times after a mission their planes were riddled with bullet holes.

It is important that we leave these chronicles for the grandchildren and future generations, but in the case of Maj. George Brannon and others of his Greatest Generation we try to find the common thread of what made that generation so great and can we ever capture that again?

I don't know about the individuals of the Greatest Generation coming from the East Coast or the West Coast because we haven't interviewed many of them, but, for those who grew up in the Midwest, there are some common childhood traits.

George Brannon, like so many children growing up in the Midwest was a member of an intact farm family. His father, mother, two sisters and three brothers all had their responsibilities to make the farm survive. This contributed to their adherence to a good work ethic. Today, so much of that has gone out the window.

At school, if any of the children got a paddling, the swats taken at school were not of great concern. The real hope was that their father never found out about it. That was a paddling to worry about. Today, when a child is reprimanded at school, the child runs home and tells his parents and it is the principal or the teacher that is in trouble.

Maj. George Brannon has been picked this year as our grand marshal not only for his outstanding military service to America, but I personally don't know of anyone who has performed as much volunteer public service as he has. He cut down the first tree to form the Tanyard Creek Trail, he spent years volunteering at Helping Hands, Bella Vista Recycle Center, MOAA, and he did more for the Veterans of Foreign Wars than anyone I know.

Our gratitude and congratulations go out to Maj. George Brannon.

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Lt. Colonel, Jim Parsons (Ret.) lives in Bella Vista. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 06/29/2016