A salute on Veterans Day
Today is Veterans Day. I’m thinking about the late Leo Thorsness. Leo was the native Minnesotan who served in Vietnam and was awarded the Medal of Honor for one helluva mission he flew in 1967, a few days before he was shot down and captured. Every ounce of the courage he displayed on his Medal of Honor Mission was required to endure his six years of confinement in the Hanoi Hilton and its Heartbreak Hotel section, which the Communists reserved for hard cases like Leo. Leo told the story in Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey, a book in which he sought to turn his ordeal in captivity to helping others survive their own hard times.
I wrote about Leo many times. I took a look, for example, at Leo bringing the lessons he drew from his life to middle school students in “The lesson for today.” When Leo died on May 3, 2017, I wrote this remembrance of him. Meeting Leo may be the highest of the many highlights I’ve had writing for Power Line.
