Editor,

I was not able to read the Saturday, April 11 Whidbey News-Times until Monday night after listening to broadcast news of folks sick and dying across our great nation from Coronavirus and tornadoes. Also, millions of people are losing their businesses and jobs.

Stressful indeed.

I had turned my attention to letters to the editor an,d yet again, find another anti-Growler faction, Mr. Tom Ewell, of Clinton, grousing about the “stress” caused by the aircraft noise.

Mr. Ewell, since you are ill informed, I’ll tell you what stress is; it’s our young men and women climbing into the cockpit of a F-18 Super Hornet, being launched off an aircraft carrier, dodging surface-to-air missiles in combat and then trying to land their aircraft back on a pitching deck the size of a postage stamp in the middle of the ocean in the dark.

That, my ill-informed friend, is stress. Stress you’ll never experience, probably because you haven’t served. If you have, shame on you for you should know better.

And stress, you say? How about this? I just told my friend and neighbor, a local ICU nurse “goodbye and Godspeed” this morning as she was catching a plane Thursday for a volunteer assignment in a small hospital North of Milan, Italy, which is in dire need of medical personnel to deal with the virus there. She will risk her life each and every day. She, unlike you, won’t let stress bother her for she has served on many volunteer missions before, including Iraq.

Here’s a suggestion, why don’t you pack your sea bag and head to the southeast. I sure the tornado victims would welcome some help. And you’d be safe from Growler noise.

Failing that, just keep your incessant whining down to a roar and be thankful these young warriors are training to keep evil ones from dropping a 500-pound bomb on your Clinton residence.

By the way, my home is in the flight path of incoming and departing flights near Dugualla Bay, and we also get carrier practice noise. It is “The Sound of Freedom,” make no mistake about that.

Fred Stilwell, USNR (Ret.), Commander

Oak Harbor