I'll have to live to be almost 90 to make it to the centennial anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2044.

Maybe I'll get there, though. My dad lived to be 90. And my mom is 95.

Of course, who knows if anyone will even note the occasion in 2044.

But I will. And I'll tell anyone willing to listen about having met Calvin Warner in 1994.

Back then, the SR presented a series of stories to observe the 50th anniversary of the bloody beach landings on the coast of France that marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.

As part of that, I interviewed Warner at his home near Finch Arboretum. We talked for a couple of hours.

He was in an early assault wave on the morning of June 6, 1944. He remembered that he was very, very scared.

And memories of things he saw that day stopped him mid-sentence more than once.

Warner died in 1999. But I think of him each June 6th.

It would have been inappropriate for me to salute him when we parted back in 1994. I'm not in the military. But I have since done so in my heart many times.

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