To the editor:

Military Spouse Appreciation Day is today. This day was set aside by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 to recognize the sacrifices military spouses make every day to make this country a better, safer place for all of us.

Military spouses don’t wear a uniform. They don’t receive medals to acknowledge their sacrifices for this nation. Many of you have probably interacted with a military spouse and not even realized it. These men and women serve silently, doing all the things normal Americans do.

They also pick up and move across the country and start their lives over approximately every year to 18 months. They spend countless hours as the volunteer backbone of our nation, spending year after year calmly and quietly carrying on, while in the back of their minds they are worrying that the last phone call they got from their service member, which was garbled and cut off right in midsentence, is the last time they’ll hear his/her voice.

They worry that knock on the door will mean their loved one is not coming home. They worry over their children who carry that same burden of worry.

Military families don’t ask for very much. But on this day our nation has set aside to honor these sacrifices, I implore you to look around and find some of the military and National Guard spouses in your neighborhood and say thank you. More importantly, ask if you can help them ease their load, even for a day. Show the world that “United We Stand.”