A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of American was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan...
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Though I was not born until 17 years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my parents, members of what Tom Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation", remembered it well.

On this day, they were both 17, and it would be six months before they would meet, when my father's ship was in port at Quonset Point, RI. My father had joined the Navy in July of 1941, shortly after graduating from high school. After undergoing basic training that summer, he was assigned to the USS Ranger(CV4) in the fall of 1941. On the morning that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the Ranger was one day from making port at Norfolk, VA after a routine patrol. My father was a month from his eighteenth birthday.

My mother saved the newspaper from December 8th, 1941, as she always did with events of major importance. Many years later, when I was old enough to understand what had happened on that day, she showed me the now-yellowed newspaper with its huge headlines, and had me to read the article, which spurred my interest in history..
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My father's ship --  USS Ranger (CV4)
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In remembrance of those who gave their lives on that day.