{"id":846,"date":"2007-11-12T17:45:08","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T18:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=846"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:37:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:37:58","slug":"the-last-of-the-doughboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=846","title":{"rendered":"The Last of the Doughboys"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"233\" height=\"379\" align=\"left\" title=\"doughboy.jpg\" id=\"image847\" alt=\"doughboy.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/doughboy.jpg\" \/>Although yesterday was officially Veterans Day, <em>every<\/em> day is Veterans Day for me. By virtue of my choice of practice, I have the privilege of providing eye care to <a href=\"http:\/\/www1.va.gov\/opa\/feature\/celebrate\/vamotto.asp\">&#8220;him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan&#8221;<\/a> (and increasingly these days, <em>her<\/em> as well).<\/p>\n<p>I consider it an honor and a privilege to care for these men and women who are, by and large, among the most decent, salt-of-the-earth folks you&#8217;ll ever meet. Indeed, they are cut from a finer grade of cloth than any politician who ever sent them into battle. At this point in my career, if I was suddenly thrust into a situation where I had to care for the well-to-do and whiny LASIK\/liposuction crowd, I would probably end up strangling someone in frustration. Better for me (and humanity) to stay where I am.<\/p>\n<p>I really don&#8217;t have a favorite group of veterans&#8211;there are good &#8216;uns and bad &#8216;uns from every era and every war. But I do confess to having a special place in my heart for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Doughboy\">the  Doughboys from World War I.<\/a> In the early 90s, I had a handful as patients, but they seem to be all gone now. In fact, there are less than twenty left in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harding.edu\/\">Harding University<\/a> graduate Will Everett took the time and effort to make sure that these remaining few didn&#8217;t slip away without being noticed. You can check out an article on his &#8220;WWI Living History Project&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harding.edu\/mag\/feature2.html\">here<\/a> and some actual video and sound clips <a href=\"http:\/\/treehouseproductions.org\/WWI_main.html\">here<\/a>. If you&#8217;re looking for a way to honor veterans and connect with the day, then take a few minutes and listen to their stories.<\/p>\n<p>I bet the last of the Doughboys got such an eyeful that they must have felt like they had seen it all. It was, after all, The <em>Great<\/em> War.<\/p>\n<p>Little did they know that they hadn&#8217;t seen anything yet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><!--6e6dc8cc7a20b6904eafc656f9483837-->\n<\/p>\n<p><!--3b67de5952ad260e653a755f659fa9db--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although yesterday was officially Veterans Day, every day is Veterans Day for me. By virtue of my choice of practice, I have the privilege of providing eye care to &#8220;him who shall have borne the battle,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,32,49,46,45,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eyes","category-harding-university","category-history","category-holidays","category-media","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9501,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/9501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}