December 7: Forgotten on Our Calendars
Another year has gone by and it’s time for the new calendars to come out.
We start off with New Year’s Day, which is important for the New Year’s Eve revelers to wake up to a start of new year. The first holiday we see on the calendar is Martin Luther King Day, which the children have off from school. When I went to school, we had Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays off; now they are lumped together as Presidents’ Day.
February opens with a very important day called Groundhog Day, when we gather to watch dignitaries dressed in frock coats and top hats yank a furry groundhog out of his hole to see if winter will be extended. The poor thing is too tired to care. Valentine’s Day: Enough said.
St. Patrick’s Day is the day for the Irish to celebrate. My calendar denotes a day for fools in April, and in May we celebrate our mothers. In June we honor fathers. July fourth we celebrate Independence Day. Columbus Day and Halloween are noted on my calendar for October. November brings Election Day, Veterans’ Day and Thanksgiving.
On many calendars December 7 has been forgotten, even though after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, President Roosevelt said “This will be a day that will live in infamy.”
This was the start of World War II for our country, when my husband, Captain Thomas Allen Delaney, was the pilot of a B-24 bomber. Our generation will never forget Pearl Harbor, though many calendars seem to have forgotten to print and remind us of this day.
–Charlotte Delaney, Solomons