A gift for my Father In Law

My father in law gave us the headboard and frame from his childhood bed when my oldest grew out of his toddler bed. When we got bunkbeds for our boys, I asked him if he would like the headboard back as a keepsake. He said not to worry about it. Well that wasnt going to work for me. Little backstory on him….He is a great man, who served our country with honor for 22 years and retired as a First Seargent. I thought itwould be neat to turn it into a storage bench that kind of had a footlocker feel to it. I figured he could keep his Army keepsakes in it. I put it together with pocket screws, and made the box bottom out of hardware cloth. I spent a long time researching the proper regulations for the size of the guidon and the letters and numbers and then scaled it down perfectly. I carved the headboard with a dremel over about 30+ hours, and then made my wife paint the carvings with paint i found to match the proper colors. Couple of coats of satin polyacrilic capped off a very long and tedious build for a man that deserves even more. It was the project that fueled my desire to start learning wood working over the last two years. It wasnt perfect, and I learned a lot but I am not sure I will ever make anything again that will make a gruff old Army Vet cry like this did.