Alpert: Deep gratitude for our veterans

Steve Alpert, who lives in Quogue, is the author of "Worth Fighting For."

Every year for the last four years I go to the Veterans Day Parade in Manhattan. I watch all the fresh faces of the young men and women as they march by in beautiful bright uniforms ablaze with sparkling buttons. The are followed by an open double-decker bus with just a few World War II Veterans.

Then comes a ragtag group of out-of-shape men, lots of facial hair and jackets that barely fit. My guys: the Vietnam vets. They walk like buddies on bowling night leaving the bar. My heart starts beating faster. A ball of emotion wells up from my gut, tightening my chest, stuffing my nose and moistening my eyes. I find myself yelling at the top of my lungs, "Thank you, thank you, guys!"

I finished high school in 1969 when the Vietnam War was still hot and went off to college with a 2-S deferment, good as long as I stayed in school. I drew 197 in the second lottery, and by the time 1973 came around, the war was winding down. I had avoided the draft, and I wasn't going to enlist. I never served my country in uniform, and now I regret it. It's like an "Incomplete" for a course required for graduation in the degree of being a man -- something I didn't realize until 2003, when I began to make paintings of Blackhawk helicopters.

I'm an artist, a painter of landscapes. Landscapes fascinate me endlessly, especially living and working in the salty air on the East End of Long Island, a five-minute drive to the sea. In November of 2003 there was a collision of two of our Blackhawk helicopters over Northern Iraq. We lost 17 people, and this singular disaster among all the others grabbed me around my throat on the way to my heart. Quite suddenly, I was compelled to make large paintings of Blackhawk helicopters.

I had no idea what to do with these things. They wouldn't go into a gallery. They wouldn't hang in anyone's living room or bedroom. It took me the better part of a year to understand that they had a job to do: Their mission was to raise money for organizations that serve veterans. Over the next couple of years, I began to donate these paintings, and with the money raised from their sale going to charity for veterans.

These days I find myself paying the checks of men and women in uniform when I encounter them in a restaurant or deli. I thank every person in uniform I see at an airport, or anywhere. It's my self-appointed duty.

In June 2007, I visited Walter Reed Army Hospital with two buddies. We met with four young men who were seriously wounded. We gave them movie passes, Starbucks cards and a poster of my first large Blackhawk painting -- a souvenir for them to remember that three old guys, strangers, came to thank them for their service.

Making paintings is my gift, and I can use it to give service at 60 years young. Instead of olive drab, I wear an old apron and blue jeans stained with paint. But believe me, I have a sergeant inside me, barking orders, spurring me to do more to help veterans and their families.

When I was a boy in the 1950s, America was a patriotic and hopeful place. I've come home to those feelings after being away for most of my adult life. My mission is simple: to give honor and whatever else I can to thank all the men and women in uniform who have given, and continue to give -- even their very lives if asked. And to ask others to join me in serving in any way that they can.

The Veterans Day parade begins marching north on Fifth Avenue at 11 a.m. today and I will be there cheering all the fine men and women, buying hot dogs for the young guys and gals in uniform, and screaming my lungs out to the guys who came back from Vietnam a long time ago.