…I could not realize the sacrifice made by the soldiers

Letter to Editor: Watching the June 6 celebration, 80 years later, at Normandy, one sees the price of freedom.

It makes me reflect on my lack of appreciation had for my relatively safe life as a young person, which continues, now older, in this little Midwest town of Ely.

Raised in a small house on Camp Street, in a small family, with parents who came from their own immigrant parents-life was easy for me. I believed we were middle class but later found that we weren’t even at that, with my father working underground for many years. After the iron ore mining company pulled out, he moved on to taconite in Babbitt.

My state of consciousness was not such that I could appreciate the easy life I had here, the great education in Ely Schools, nor my father’s recall of his experiences in WWII. That war was with him always as he returned home from Europe following those times crossing the Atlantic to North Africa led by Patton up through Sicily, Italy, France, then Hitler’s hideaway and the death camps of Auschwitz.

I could not realize the sacrifice made by the soldiers who saved us all from oppression of Hitler, Mussolini, Hiro Hito. I just went about my easy life here, a baby boomer, working my way through life relatively unpolitical. I have taken freedom for granted.

Now we are faced with oppression from a potential criminal, his cronies, and other autocrats. I now can appreciate the idea of losing what I have taken as if my right, without question. I must support the better of the choices for president, fearing fascism again surfacing with a questionable conservative candidate hoping to become king.

I fear that our country needs go through civil war, world war, again. This harsh lesson may be needed to shake the former president’s supporters awake. To remind us that we should value and protect freedom, such not a given, being citizens of this country. Perhaps those who support the former president are like I was, blindly taking what we have for granted.

I may sound like a doomsayer, but am reminded how, at the first indication of Covid, I realized the potential for thousands contracting the disease. Electing the former president, with all his known issues and crimes, will be a dark wave across this country, much like a plague to freedom.

Cecilia Rolando Ely, MN