My Sister-in-Law Said Women Like Me Never Outrank Anyone Then a Marine General Recognized Me at the Wedding

their late sixties and seventies carrying the physical receipts of long lives. Thick fingers swollen from arthritis. Hearing aids. Knee braces. One man had oxygen tubing tucked discreetly beneath his collar. Nobody there looked like a recruitment poster. That made me like them immediately.

A retired colonel named Mercer shook my hand and held it a second continue reading …