On this Veteran’s Day, I share with you music appropriate for Veteran’s Day by a group that is near and dear to my heart:  the Cadet Chorale of the United States Air Force Academy.

This video is circa 1989/1990.  The whole thing is  relatively short and worth watching, but I’d recommend skipping to 6:27 (click HERE) for performances of “High Flight” and “The Air Force Hymn.”

• The lyrics of the  former are probably familiar to many:  a poem by written by John Gillespie McGee, Jr, a WWII pilot, onto the back of a letter describing the awe and wonder of flight; he mailed the envelope to his parents, and a few days later, died in a mid-air collision.  It is quoted often, perhaps most memorably by President Reagan following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
• The latter — the first and final verses of “The Air Force Hymn” — is probably less familiar, even to the typical Air Force veteran:

“Lord guard and guide the men who fly through the great spaces of the sky;
Be with them traversing the air through darkening storms and sunshine fair.

Aloft in solitudes of space, uphold them with thy saving grace;
Oh, God, protect the men who fly through lonely ways beneath the sky.”