As I was driving to Columbus this morning, the radio announcer mentioned that today, June 6th, was the 64th anniversary of D-Day. D-Day may not have the meaning to the younger generation that it does to someone like me, who can remember as a child sitting in a drive-in theater with my parents and watching on the big screen the first run of the movie The Longest Day. It should.

When the announcer mentioned it this morning, I thought of Fred. Who is Fred? One of my storytellers of course, who you will meet more fully and properly in the book. I have been privileged to meet the most remarkable Buckeyes over the course of this journey. Fred is one of them. Like many of his generation that I have talked to, Fred's story of the stadium and his years at OSU are intertwined and inseparable with World War II. Sixty-four plus years ago, Fred was in military intelligence and one of the men in the room when General Eisenhower and others planned D-Day, the invasion of Normandy. At the time, it was the largest navel invasion in the history of mankind. Who knows what our lives would be like today had it failed?

Fred, to you and all the others of your generation, we remember and on this day give thanks to all who had a part in it.