On this, the 62nd anniversary of D-Day, my thoughts turn, as they always do, to two men. Neither of them fought in WWII, but they each helped me understand the enormity of what the men who landed on the beaches or parachuted behind enemy lines accomplished that day.

The first man is Ronald Reagan. I was 12 years old in 1984 and I vividly remember watching Reagan's speeches commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. First, I watched him describe the exploits of the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc.

You can sense his awe when he talks about these men:

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Later that day, Reagan headed to Omaha Beach and gave another speech. This speech was more personal and the Gipper, along with most of the crowd, was tearing up by the end. It's my favorite Reagan speech. These are the lines that I always remember:

Lisa Zannata Henn began her story by quoting her father, who promised that he would return to Normandy. She ended with a promise to her father, who died 8 years ago of cancer: "I'm going there, Dad, and I'll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I'll see the graves, and I'll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I'll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let any one else forget. And, Dad, I'll always be proud."

I'm sure not coincidentally, President Bush used some similar imagery in his 2004 speech at Normandy, given on the heels of Reagan's death:

Before the landing in Omaha, Sergeant Earl Parker of Bedford, Virginia proudly passed around a picture of Danny, the newborn daughter he had never held. He told the fellows, "If I could see this daughter of mine, I wouldn't mind dying." Sergeant Parker is remembered here at the Garden of the Missing. And he is remembered back home by a woman in her 60s, who proudly shows a picture of her handsome, smiling, young dad.

To me it's entirely fitting that these Presidents used the words of fathers and daughters to celebrate D-Day because the other person I always think about today is my Father. My Dad passed away 3 years ago and instead of thinking about him on his birthday or Father's Day, I find that I think about him more when I do or see something that I know he would have enjoyed, like a NCAA tourney game decided with a last second bucket or the accomplishments of his grandsons or a program about D-Day.

Dad was only 11 on D-Day, so his personal memories were mostly about the boy who taught him how to swim one summer and then went on to join the 101st Airborne and jump into Normandy. But he was a history buff. He made sure his children were raised on a steady diet of WWII movies, Victory at Sea shows and Time Life WWII books (complete with gory pictures!). Because of that, I knew all about the "Greatest Generation" before Tom Brokaw, Stephen Ambrose and Tom Hanks made it cool.

Today is a day when all Americans should pause and think about the gift of freedom these brave men gave us. But it's also a day that I stop to think about one of the gifts my Dad gave me, which was to grow up already knowing and appreciating the sacrifices America made for the sake of liberty. So many people today grew up in the cynical 60s and 70s. They grew up thinking America was the cause of the world's problems. Because of my Dad, I got to grow up seeing America the way that he saw it and that Reagan saw it: as that shining city on a hill.

So today I say "thank you" to all the veterans and "thank you" to everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan today. But, I also want to say "Thanks, Doc" ;-)

D-Day