About the Author: Jeremy Lewis lives in Galena. He hosts A Most Unpredictable Life and is the author of The Birth of the Sentients.
I live in Galena now. On Veterans Day, that fact matters more to me than the ranks or the ribbons.
I grew up in Ohio and graduated from Hillsdale High School in 1992. The Army took me a long way from those classrooms.
In 1997, I was a young lieutenant in Bosnia. In March 2003, I was a company commander crossing from Kuwait into Iraq with the invasion.
Our oldest was born the same month I came home.
I went back to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, to Samarra, on a team advising Iraqi special police commandos. Then Afghanistan, three times: a planner at the headquarters in Kabul in 2009, a year in the north in 2010 and 2011, and Kandahar and Bagram in 2013, commanding a logistics battalion.
I had taken command at Fort Carson in September 2012, the same month our youngest was born. She was five months old when I left.
Five combat deployments. I retired as a lieutenant colonel.
Logistics is not the kind of war story that makes the movies. It is fuel, parts, food, water, and the people who keep aircraft and convoys moving when the plan meets the ground.
Commanding that work in Afghanistan meant carrying other people’s kids as much as carrying a mission. You learn fast that the quiet jobs decide whether anyone else gets home.
Between those deployments my wife, Lorrie, moved our household eight times in ten years and ran it alone every time I left. That is service, too. It does not come with a ribbon.
After the Army I went to Tesla and led service parts operations for North America until July 2023. Scaling service across hundreds of locations taught me something the Army had already started teaching me: systems matter, but people keep systems honest.
When that chapter closed, I was glad to be back in Ohio, in a different uniform. I started a weekly podcast with my friend Terry Lewis (we are not related) called A Most Unpredictable Life. I wrote a novel, The Birth of the Sentients, under the name J.R. Lewis.
Writing and talking did not replace the Army. They gave me a way to spend the life that came after it.
Delaware County is where that after-life is rooted. We moved to Galena in 2018, and on ordinary Tuesdays here nobody asks about Afghanistan first. They ask if you are coming to the meeting, if someone needs a ride, if you have an hour to spare.
That is a gift. It is also a responsibility.
Veterans Day can turn into a parade and a polite thank you. I am grateful for both. What I notice more, living in Galena, is the quieter honor of becoming a friend to someone who may not feel connected.
Making room for the spouse who kept the household running. Checking on the neighbor who needs it. Showing up for my kids’ and my nephew’s activities because I finally can. Making breakfast once a week for a group of men and hearing their stories.
That is thanks enough. I am thankful to have a resting place that over the past eight years we have called home.
I am a lifetime VFW member. I still believe the best honor we can give veterans is not a louder speech. It is a usable invitation into ordinary community life. Come sit. Come serve. Come tell the story when you are ready, and sit with us when you are not.
If this county has taught me anything since I put the uniform away, it is that home is not a backdrop for the war stories. Home is the work.
It is the Tuesday night commitment, a volunteer shift at the zoo, the name learned on the pickleball court, the willingness to be useful without being interesting. Podcasts and books are part of how I process the road behind me. Delaware County is where I practice the road ahead.
The uniform is gone. The habit is not.
If you see a veteran this week, a thank you for your service is always welcome, but do just a little more. Ask how they are doing. Offer a real task if they want one. Leave room for silence.
I think in Galena and across Delaware County, that is how we keep faith with the people who left and came back.
