10/08/2026
Thank you to the Clay County Progress for publishing this article in today's paper.
This will give you a little more insight on the WHY....
Not in the Service Record: The Stories Behind the Veterans We See Every Day
By: Amy Modglin, US Navy Veteran
There is an older man you have probably passed at the grocery store wearing a Navy cap.
Maybe you’ve seen another sitting at a restaurant in an American Legion or VFW hat. Perhaps you’ve noticed the woman wearing the T-shirt that says, “I am a veteran, too.”
We see them.
But how often do we really see them?
We know they served. We may thank them for their service. We might know which branch they were in or approximately when they wore the uniform.
But there is so much we do not know.
A service record can tell us someone’s rank, duty stations, qualifications, awards and decorations. A DD-214 can reduce years, or decades of military service to boxes, dates and abbreviations.
What those documents cannot tell us is what happened between those lines.
That is where Not in the Service Record begins.
I am a Navy veteran myself, and one of the things I am extremely passionate about is helping civilians understand a world that can be difficult to understand if you have never lived in it.
Military service is more than wars, medals and the moments that make history books.
It is standing watch while the rest of the world sleeps.
It is friendships formed under circumstances most people will never experience.
It is doing things at 19 or 20 years old that, decades later, sound almost unbelievable when someone finally tells the story.
Sometimes it is terrifying.
Sometimes it is heartbreaking.
And sometimes it is absolutely hilarious.
Most often, the veteran telling the story doesn’t seem to understand why everyone else in the room finds it remarkable.
Just a few weeks into the project, I have already encountered that again and again while conducting these interviews.
I have listened to veterans casually describe experiences that stopped me in my tracks, only to watch them shrug as though they had just told me what they ate for breakfast.
To them, it was their job.
It was simply what they did.
And perhaps that is one reason so many of these stories have never been told.
We often wait until someone’s funeral to learn who they really were.
Just last week, I attended the funeral of a local veteran I had never met. During the service, someone stood and told a story about his time in the military. As I listened, I found myself wondering how many people sitting there were hearing that story for the very first time. I wondered how many members of his own family had never heard it.
And I kept thinking:
Why do we wait until someone is gone to tell these stories?
We read an obituary and discover that the quiet man we knew from around town served somewhere we never knew he had been. Someone mentions a story we had never heard. A family member opens a box containing photographs, ribbons, letters or orders, and suddenly an entire chapter of a person’s life appears.
By then, the person who could tell us what those things actually meant is gone.
I do not want us to keep waiting that long.
Not in the Service Record is an effort to preserve some of those stories while the people who lived them are still here to tell them.
These are not intended to be comprehensive military biographies. I am not trying to document every duty station, promotion or award.
I want the stories behind those things.
I want to know about the friend you have not forgotten in 50 years.
I want to know about the time you got in trouble and somehow got out of it.
I want to know about the ridiculous thing everyone in your unit still laughs about.
I want to know about the assignment that seemed completely ordinary at the time but sounds extraordinary when you describe it today.
I want to know about the moment that changed you.
And I want civilians to understand that the veteran they pass in the grocery store has an entire story underneath that hat.
I especially want people to understand that veterans do not all look the same.
Some are 90 years old.
Some are 25.
Some wear their service everywhere they go. Others rarely mention it.
And many women veterans know exactly what it feels like to stand beside a man and have everyone assume he is the veteran.
Behind every one of them is an individual experience that cannot be captured by the word “veteran.”
I have completed my first several interviews, and I’ve already learned something important:
I could do this for years and never run out of stories.
I hope I get the opportunity.
So, from time to time, I am going to introduce you to one of our veterans.
Some of their stories will make you laugh. Some may make you cry. Some will probably leave you wondering how the person sitting across from me could possibly tell that story so casually.
But every one of them will allow us to know a little more about the human being behind the uniform.
And if you are a veteran reading this, I have one request:
Tell us your story.
Don’t decide that it isn’t interesting enough.
Don’t tell yourself that somebody else did more, served longer, went somewhere more dangerous or earned more medals.
This is not a competition.
Your story does not have to be heroic.
It just has to be yours.
Because someday, someone will look at your service record and see where you went, what you did and perhaps what you earned.
I want to preserve the things that piece of paper could never tell them.
The things that are not in the service record.
For more information, follow us on Facebook at Not in the Service Record – Veteran Interviews or send an email to [email protected].
