Contest Entry: Meet My Father, Master Sgt. John Eliyas

By Dan Zimmerman

By John Eliyas

My father wasn’t big, physically, only 5’3” and 135 lbs. He didn’t graduate from high school. Most of his life he worked as a machinist in a foundry. It wasn’t until I got older that I began to understand there was a deeper current running through him. I grew up in a northern Ohio town on the lake. My father worked the night shift; my mom was a home-maker. We didn’t have much, but my folks managed to send my two sisters and me to parochial school. We had what we needed, sometimes what we wanted. One weekend, when I was 8, my dad and I visited my uncle Joe on Catawba Island, we then took a leisurely drive to Port Clinton and Camp Perry. This was my first introduction to the matches . . .

Wow, was I impressed! Steely-eyed soldiers shooting off hand with .45s. Wind was whipping off Lake Erie, often to the detriment of the marksmen. The loud reports of weapons firing down range. This, to an eight year old, was almost an infinite distance to the target: “Dad, how can they hit it so far away?” He would just smile …read more

Source:: Truth About Guns