My late father, Walter Danison, was stationed at Pearl Harbor 78 years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941. Born in 1918, he was willing to die to protect the freedom we have today. He thought of himself as an ordinary man, who alongside other ordinary men, engaged in battle for an extraordinary value upheld in an extraordinary country.
He considered it a privilege to be a U.S. citizen, and his behavior reflected this. He made the effort to vote. He may not have always agreed with how things were run, but he didn’t complain about the country in which he called home. He valued his right to possess arms, his right to worship God at church and his right to express his political opinions without condemning others.
He never trashed the land — rather, I saw him invest in planting, tending and growing the land around him in ways that increased value. I am grateful for my father’s service, this country and for those who fight, in many ways, for the rights I enjoy.
— Mary Jeanne Danison
Anchorage
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