08/18/2026
Jill Hubbs, the recently retired General Manager at WSRE, the PBS station in Pensacola, Florida, is the daughter of Navy Commander Donald Richard Hubbs, still missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.
On August 14th Jill addressed the recent vandalism at the WWII Memorial in Washington, DC in a beautifully written public post on her page. It's lengthy but worth your time to read. Please see below for Jill's post. (NOTE: I apologize for the spacing. The original spacing did not transfer.)
Keeping faith,
Marty
(Ms.) Marty Eddy
Michigan Coordinator for the National League of American Prisoners & Missing in Southeast Asia (aka National League of POW/MIA Families)
~and~ Secretary/Treasurer, POW Committee of Michigan
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 248-214-6398
Fax: 248-282-0906
*The National League of POW/MIA Families is a tax-exempt humanitarian organization (23-7071242) eligible for donations*
*The POW Committee of Michigan is a tax-exempt humanitarian organization (23-7334508) eligible for donations*
Melissa Farris defaced the WWII Memorial today with soap and spray paint. She’s been arrested and undoubtedly will serve time in prison which she certainly deserves. But I want more than just that punishment for her. I’ve written a letter to her that I hope she will eventually read:
Dear Melissa Farris: Before You Defaced Their Memorial, I Wish You Had Known Their Stories.
I don’t know you.
I don’t know what happened in your life that brought you today to the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., and made you decide that this sacred place should become the canvas for whatever anger, frustration or message you wanted America to hear.
I don’t know what you were trying to say.
Perhaps someday I would be willing to listen.
But first, I want you to listen.
Not to me.
To them.
Because I don’t think you understood whose memorial you were defacing.
You weren’t simply putting soap into a fountain or painting words on government property.
You were standing in a place dedicated to more than 16 million American men and women who served during World War II and more than 400,000 who gave their lives.
Behind every one of those numbers was a human being.
A son.
A daughter.
A husband.
A wife.
A brother.
A sister.
A sweetheart.
A best friend.
Someone who had plans for tomorrow.
They came from cities and farms, fishing villages and factory towns. They came from Pensacola and Chicago and New York and thousands of communities in between.
Some were barely old enough to shave.
Some were young women leaving home for the first time.
They represented every race, religion and economic circumstance.
And when their country called, they went.
Some came home.
Some came home wounded.
Some carried memories they almost never discussed.
And some families waited for a young person to walk through the front door who never did.
My family was one of those families.
Let Me Introduce You to My Uncle John Holm
His name was John Holm.
He was from Pensacola.
He was 25 years old.
He served in the United States Army infantry during World War II.
But before he was a soldier, John was a young man with an entire life waiting for him.
He had fallen in love.
He got married.
He had been a husband for only one month before he left to serve his country.
One month.
Think about that.
Imagine being a young bride and watching the man you had just promised to spend your life with leave for war.
Imagine the plans they must have made.
The home they might have wanted.
The children they might someday have had.
The anniversaries they expected to celebrate.
All of those ordinary, beautiful things that constitute a life.
John went to war instead.
He fought in the Pacific.
And during the terrible battle for Okinawa, my 25-year-old uncle was killed.
He never came home.
His young bride never got the lifetime she had been promised.
His mother never got her son back.
Our family never got all of those years we should have had with him.
That is what the phrase killed in action means when you strip away the military terminology.
It means an empty chair at Thanksgiving.
It means a mother who never hugs her son again.
It means a young wife who suddenly has to imagine an entirely different future.
It means nieces and nephews growing up knowing a man largely through photographs and family stories because history took him before they ever had the opportunity to know him.
Melissa, John Holm is one of the people whose memorial you defaced.
Let Me Introduce You to Some of Pensacola’s Other Heroes
John was not alone.
Pensacola and Northwest Florida sent thousands of our sons and daughters into that war.
Private William A. Gibson served in Company E of the 377th Infantry Regiment, 95th Infantry Division.
He fought in Europe.
On November 26, 1944, William Gibson was killed in action.
He was awarded the Purple Heart.
Another Pensacola family received terrible news.
Another chair became empty.
Another future disappeared.
Patrick Gibney Emmanuel, born in Pensacola, was a young law student when his country went to war.
He served with the Army’s 630th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
His unit landed at Omaha Beach after D-Day and helped liberate France. He experienced the Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge and continued fighting through Europe until victory.
He survived.
He returned home with the Bronze Star and built a life after the war.
Then there was Gordon Bernard Bridges, another Pensacola man.
He experienced Omaha Beach.
He fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
He was wounded.
He was captured.
He became a prisoner of war.
And somehow he survived and came home.
Imagine what he carried home inside him.
Imagine the things he had seen.
Imagine the friends he remembered for the rest of his life who never had the opportunity to grow old beside him.
And there is Duane Brewton, from the Pensacola area.
He served in the United States Army during World War II.
He served in France.
He was wounded in the line of duty and received the Purple Heart.
In 2026, Duane Brewton celebrated his 109th birthday.
Think about that.
A living human bridge between our world and theirs.
And then there was my friend John Appleyard.
John served in the United States Army during World War II and experienced combat in Germany.
He survived.
And then he did something equally important.
He remembered.
John came home and spent decades making certain that those who followed understood those who came before them.
He became one of Pensacola’s great storytellers and historians. He wrote scores of books and historical works. He supported veterans. He participated in Honor Flight.
And he helped create Pensacola’s own World War II and Korean War memorials.
Think about that for a moment, Melissa.
A man who actually experienced that war came home and spent part of the rest of his life building memorials.
You are accused of defacing one.
I Was There When They Saw Their Memorial
And there is something else I wish I could show you.
In fact, I can.
Years ago, I had the extraordinary privilege of traveling on the Honor Flights that left Pensacola carrying our World War II veterans to Washington, D.C.
These were the men—and yes, the women—of the World War II generation.
They had served our country more than six decades earlier.
They had put on uniforms when they were young.
They had gone wherever their country sent them.
Some fought.
Some cared for the wounded.
Some flew aircraft.
Some worked in communications, intelligence, logistics and countless other essential roles.
Women served in the Army and Navy. They served as nurses. They served in the Women’s Army Corps and the WAVES. Women flew military aircraft as WASPs.
Their contribution must never be forgotten.
Some of these veterans had spent most of their lives saying very little about what they had experienced.
Then, late in their lives, we put them on airplanes in Pensacola and took them to Washington.
To see their memorial.
The very memorial you are accused of defacing.
I was there.
I watched their faces.
I listened to their voices.
I saw elderly veterans—people who had experienced things most of us can barely imagine—stand before that memorial and become young again for a moment.
They remembered.
They remembered the places where they served.
They remembered the battles.
They remembered the fear.
But most of all, they remembered the people who weren’t standing beside them.
Their friends never got to grow old.
The young men and women they remembered were still 18, 19, 20 or 25 years old in their minds.
I watched them touch the memorial.
I watched them study it.
I saw tears.
I watched their children walk beside them.
I watched complete strangers approach them simply to shake their hands.
And I heard two words over and over again:
Thank you.
The experience meant so much to me that I helped preserve it in a documentary called Honor Flight…A Journey of Heroes.
Melissa, I wish you would watch it.
Not because I produced it.
Not because I want you to hear anything I have to say.
I want you to hear them.
Listen to the World War II veterans themselves.
Watch their faces when they arrive in Washington.
Listen as they talk about what it means finally to stand before a national memorial created in their honor and in memory of the friends who never came home.
Watch them touch it.
Watch them remember.
Because something became very clear to me standing there with them.
They weren’t visiting a tourist attraction.
They were visiting their friends.
Some were remembering people they had last seen on a battlefield more than sixty years earlier.
Some were remembering the person they themselves had been when they left home.
And some were carrying memories that had followed them every day of their lives.
Melissa, I wish you could have been standing beside me.
I wish you could have watched those veterans arrive.
I wish you could have heard their stories before you ever approached that memorial.
Because I wonder whether, if you had known them, you could have done what you are accused of doing.
Could you have looked into the eyes of a 90-year-old World War II veteran and then picked up the spray paint?
Could you have listened to a widow talk about the young man who never returned and then poured soap into that fountain?
Could you have heard the story of my uncle John—25 years old, married for only one month, an Army infantryman killed on Okinawa—and then looked at his memorial as nothing more than a place to make a statement?
I hope not.
My Family’s Sacrifice Didn’t End With World War II
There is another reason this affects me so deeply.
My uncle John’s death was not my family’s last encounter with war.
My father also served in the military during the World War II era.
He continued serving his country afterward, ultimately becoming a United States Navy pilot and commanding officer.
Then another war came.
Vietnam.
On March 17, 1968, my father, Commander Donald Richard Hubbs, disappeared while serving his country.
He became Missing in Action.
I know what those words mean.
I know what it means for a family to wait.
I know what it is like to have history enter your home and take someone you love.
Our family sacrificed a young man in World War II.
A generation later, we lost another in Vietnam.
So when I stand before a veterans’ memorial, Melissa, I don’t see stone.
I see faces.
I see families.
I see my uncle.
I see my father.
And I see millions of American families whose stories are woven into these sacred places.
Because a war memorial does not belong only to the dead.
It belongs to the people who spent the rest of their lives missing them.
It belongs to the young bride who had been married for one month.
It belongs to the mother who waited for her son.
It belongs to the child who grew up without a father.
It belongs to the veteran who came home without the friend who had been standing beside him.
And it belongs to generations not yet born, because they need somewhere to go to understand what freedom has cost.
I Want to Understand Why
And this is where my anger gives way to a question.
Why?
I genuinely want to understand.
What was happening inside you that made you believe this was the appropriate place for your anger?
What were you trying to tell us?
What grievance or desperation made you look at a memorial to America’s World War II generation and decide that it should become your canvas?
I may disagree profoundly with your message.
But I would listen.
Because the freedom to speak—even the freedom to criticize this country and its government—is among the freedoms generations of Americans have fought to defend.
You were free to protest.
You were free to carry a sign.
You were free to stand outside that memorial and tell America exactly what you believed.
You were free to criticize our government.
You were free to demand that somebody listen.
But you were not free to damage their memorial.
And therein lies the terrible irony of what happened in Washington:
The freedom you exercised was protected, in part, by the sacrifices of the very people whose memorial you are accused of defacing.
I Don’t Want Prison to Be the End of Your Sentence
You now face serious federal charges.
A court—not me—will determine whether you are guilty and, if so, what punishment the law requires.
But if you are convicted, I hope something happens beyond incarceration, fines and restitution.
If legally permissible, I hope a judge requires you to perform hundreds of hours of meaningful service to America’s veterans.
Not as humiliation.
As education.
Serve meals at a veterans’ home.
Push wheelchairs at a VA hospital.
Help an elderly veteran get to an appointment.
Volunteer with an Honor Flight.
Clean veterans’ graves.
Place American flags beside their headstones.
Sit with veterans who have no family nearby.
Meet a Gold Star mother.
Meet a Gold Star daughter.
Meet a widow.
Sit across from a veteran and ask a simple question:
“Will you tell me your story?”
And then don’t talk.
Listen.
Learn the names.
Because incarceration may teach someone that an act was illegal.
A fine may teach someone that destruction has a monetary cost.
Restitution may pay for cleaning the stone.
But none of those things necessarily teaches someone what the stone means.
Service might.
Then Go Back
And after you have done all of that, Melissa, I hope you return to Washington.
I hope you go back to the National World War II Memorial.
This time, don’t bring soap.
Don’t bring spray paint.
Bring flowers.
Walk slowly.
Look at the stars.
Read the inscriptions.
Watch the veterans who still make pilgrimages there.
Watch their children and grandchildren gently take their arms.
And remember the people whose stories I have shared with you.
Remember William Gibson.
Remember Patrick Emmanuel.
Remember Gordon Bridges.
Remember Duane Brewton.
Remember John Appleyard.
And please remember a 25-year-old Pensacola infantryman named John Holm.
Remember that he had been married for only one month.
Remember the young bride he left behind.
Remember that somewhere on Okinawa, the future they had planned together ended.
Then look around that enormous memorial and understand something almost overwhelming:
John’s story is only one story.
There are millions more.
More than 16 million Americans served.
More than 400,000 died.
And behind every statistic was somebody’s John.
Somebody’s husband.
Somebody’s wife.
Somebody’s brother.
Somebody’s sister.
Somebody’s father.
Somebody’s mother.
Somebody’s child.
That is what you are accused of defacing.
Not simply granite.
Memory.
Not simply a fountain.
Sacrifice.
Not simply government property.
A promise.
A promise from the living to the dead that says:
We remember you.
We know what you gave.
We know what it cost.
And we will not forget.
Melissa, I don’t hate you.
I want something far more meaningful than that.
I want you to understand.
Watch Honor Flight…A Journey of Heroes.
Listen to those veterans.
Hear their voices.
Look into their faces.
Learn their names.
Learn their stories.
Understand that when those elderly men and women stood before that World War II Memorial, they weren’t simply visiting Washington.
They were visiting their friends.
And understand why those of us who have stood there with them see that memorial differently.
You did not merely deface stone.
You defaced their story.
And now I hope you will take the time to learn it.
Because freedom is not free.
Someone paid for it.
In my family, his name was John Holm.
And a generation later, his name was Donald Richard Hubbs.
In thousands upon thousands of other American families, the names are different.
But the empty chair is the same.
Learn their names, Melissa.
Listen to their stories.
And if you are given the opportunity— spend part of the rest of your life helping us honor them.
Jill Hubbs
Pensacola, Florida
