The Day After Veterans Day

At Impact, my colleague Gil Weinreich asked my other colleague, the executive managing editor of this magazine, Danielle Andrus, to thank her father for his long military aviation service. At the Junxure conference, I personally thanked Zohar Swaine, formerly of TD Ameritrade and now an in-demand consultant, for his Army service during Desert Storm. The busy Skip Schweiss of TD Ameritrade nevertheless spends time helping arrange “Honor Flights” for World War II veterans to their memorial in Washington. At ThinkAdvisor.com, for several years we’ve published slideshows honoring veterans who are advisors now or who partner with advisors (including some who might surprise you, like Harold Evensky and Bill Gross). Schwab CEO Walt Bettinger tweeted on Nov. 11 that the company was honored to be named a “2015 Military Friendly Employer” by the publisher of GI Jobs and Military Spouse magazines—Schwab is not the only financial services firm named to that list.

The story in my family is that my father’s hair was dark before his four years in the Pacific theater during World War II. When he came out, after spending quality time in places like Guadalcanal and New Guinea and the Philippines, his hair was all white. By chance, the father of Mark Tibergien, he told me, also served difficult duty in the south Pacific during WWII. Of course, many other service members and their families lose much more important faculties than hair, including their lives. That’s just one reason to remember their sacrifice and those of their families.

So many of us live such comfortable lives without pausing to consider that, that comfort is partly paid for by the relatively few among us who have and are and will surrender their comforts by serving. The least we can do is thank them when we meet them, make sure they’re given good care and a leg up when their fighting days are over and, yes, we can even hire them.