On the train platform as I prepared to head into Manhattan early Thursday morning, a young boy was complaining to his mother about having to accompany her to work.

“You don’t think I like it any more than you, do you?” the woman said. “I can’t find a babysitter.”

I sure wasn’t going to volunteer. Yet when I got to the Bank of America Tower across from Bryant Park, I saw a scene for which the kid might have been ideal as 75 bank employees were busy assembling some 3,000 comfort kits for our soldiers overseas.

Thursday, of course, was Veterans Day, which kids know mostly because it is a holiday and means no school. But instead of just getting the day off, Veterans Day contains more of a meaning, especially with American military personnel fighting on two fronts.

The volunteers wore T-shirts with signs that read, “Veterans Day 2010: A Call to Serve.” They helped assemble the comfort packs that included cookies, crackers, bottled water, pens, I-Tunes gift certificates, stress balls bearing the Yankees’ inter-locking “NY” logo and other items that were placed in bags labeled “From the Big Apple” and then into Priority Mail cartons to be shipped to U.S. troops serving around the world.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi was there for the event that also included volunteers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Mariners and conveyed poignant thoughts about the importance of the day. Joe’s message was fitting for the event that was part of a national initiative led by Mission Serve in which Americans are rallying around the troops all week by volunteering support alongside veterans, active-duty military and their families.

Bank of America is a national sponsor of Mission Serve and has donated nearly $2 million in military support-related grants since 2008. After a welcome from Bank of America vice president Eric Seal and military affairs executive Jeff Cathey, Girardi gave a moving talk in which he swelled up with emotion several times.

“It’s important for us to provide our men and women in the military with comfort kits,” he said. “Think of all the comforts we have here at home that their service provides for us. We should serve them because they serve us.”

Girardi recalled two incidents in his life this year that brought Thursday’s message home. One was at the recent Army-Air Force football game at West Point where Joe took his son Dante as a birthday present.

“There we met a couple of wounded warriors,” Joe said. “One of them had this very deep scar from a cut on his leg. That gave me a chance to explain to my son the meaning of sacrifice; that it was more than giving up soda for Lent or something like that.”

Girardi also referred to an early-season Yankees trip to Baltimore where the team visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in nearby Washington, D.C.

“One of the soldiers I met had been shot in the head,” Girardi said. “The bullet went through his ear and out of the back of his head. He told me that he couldn’t wait to go back to be with his team in Iraq. Talk about commitment. That is total commitment. That is the spirit we honor today.”

With that, the Yankees manager rolled up his sleeves and began packing bags. “We need more cookies,” he said at one point.

What we really need is more of an attitude on a daily basis of the kind that was on display in the lobby of the Bank of America Tower Thursday.