"Saving Private Ryan"

I watched the movie "Saving Private Ryan" tonight - the first time since I saw it in it's origional theatrical release. I think that it's the best war movie ever made and along with "Schindler's List," the most intense film I have ever seen. The movie holds an added distinction for me because my father was at Normandy on D-Day. Three and a half years prior to that, shortly after enlisting in the Navy at age 19, he was at Pearl Harbor on that fateful December 7 th. morning. I always told him that his World War II travel agent should have been fired. I asked him if he would watch the movie with me when it was newly released on video tape. He said, "No, I saw the origional. That was plenty for me." Dad now resides in a care fascility, his body consumed with bone cancer. His mind, however, is sharp as ever. He can still remember the time I actually caught a fly ball when I played Cub Scout Baseball at age nine, my brother and sister's newspaper drives years ago and the time he made my sister retrace her steps after coming home because he felt it important that she knew the names of the streets she had taken. His humor remains classic Hellestad. I was speaking with him recently when a nurse came into his room to hook him up to his hoist in order to move him. I told him that I would call him back after his "hooker" left the room. He thought that was incredibly funny. I have his whimsicle, twisted sense of humor. Yes, I may be a bit prejudiced, but I think it's fair for me to say that I believe this would be a much better world if it only contained more men like him. He's a class act - a man's man. I love and respect him to pieces.