Frances Hesselbein Quotes

After the United States entered the war, I joined the Naval Reserve and spent ninety days in a Columbia University dormitory learning to be a naval officer.

These days, it's often women in uniform - moms, wives, even grandmothers - who deploy and leave their families behind.

I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

If somebody in a family is in service, the whole family is in service. I didn't know that. I didn't know our veterans were being deployed seven, eight, nine, 10 times. It's inhumane.

One thing that was amazing about World War II was that everybody signed up for the duration plus six months. Fliers got to leave combat after 25 missions, or 35 missions, but other than that, you were in it. You were part of the great effort, until, oh boy, six months after it was over.

When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.

My graduate study was interrupted, like that of many others, by World War II.

My father-in-law was a nuclear-submarine captain. My father was in the military.

When my dad was in Vietnam, we lost a parent for a year. Thank God we didn't lose a parent for good.

My work as a naval officer in World War II enabled me to serve on 49 different South Pacific islands so that I came to know the area about as well as anyone.

I had known Colonel Charlie Flynn since he was a lieutenant 23 years earlier, and I remembered how his first child, Molly, had been born while Charlie was deployed to the first Gulf War.

I will share a personal experience: my father was posted in Jammu & Kashmir during the Kargil war. I remember my mom sitting in front of television throughout the day reading tickers which had name of the martyrs.

A few weeks after the planes hit the World Trade Center, I applied for a direct commission in the U.S. Army Reserve and ultimately served three active duty tours, including overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Really, my whole family served three tours.

Dad was the generation that fought in both world wars, and people married rather later when they had been in the trenches. My mum was an actress and he saw her in a show in London and they married. She stopped acting when she had babies, which is a shame.

I did not know that if a member of a family serves, the whole family serves. I did not know that the spouses of our service members carry such a heavy load.

The day after high school, I was off to basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Station. You gotta understand, we didn't care about sports. We wanted to win the war. We wanted to win the war! And at the time, we didn't know if we would.

I have a brother who has been overseas for two tours. I've been very fortunate that he has come home safely. Whether or not you support the war, always support our soldiers.

This is the hardest part of military family life - being away from each other.

All I'm saying is [John McCain] cannot look a soldier in the eye and say "Questioning the president is less supportive to you than extending your tour three months." You should be coming home to your family.

Constant rotation, based on a 19th century Army model, prevents spouses from putting down roots and gaining meaningful deployment.

As someone who grew up in a military family, I know what it's like to have those you care about serve overseas.

Increased demands on the members of the Iowa National Guard often means increased time away from home and increased responsibility for those left behind.

I went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and then I went right into the Navy after that.

Military families become familiar with trying to contort their lives around deployments and separations.

Being given the honorary rank of brat is the armed services' way of saying thank you to us kids for having grit too. They understand that when one member of a family joins the military, the whole family bears the weight of their service.