A Veterans Day Type of Experience
It has been a strange two weeks for me, both work and Citizen Wausau have been a bit overwhelming. The transition to winter, and my new Doctor stuff are sure to be an exciting thing, but I wanted to sit down and write about something else.
A while ago we talked about giving me the title of Community Builder, or whatever we came up with. I suggested, Over-Sentimentalist. I am prone to cry, and prone to giant swings of passionate discourse or lack thereof. Last week though I learned a lesson in the true meaning of community.
I had the chance to spend time with some Veterans in the southern part of the state, as they finalized the plans for the WWII memorial that their VFW or American Legion post was building, and they asked me to come and help out with an event. I was as shocked to be there as anyone, but they were amazing people.
So, I am confirmed and bona fide anti-Bush, anti-war, pro-peace, left-wing nutcase. I have been known to roll my eyes listening to my grandfather’s friends talk about this or that in regards to the American Legion, the greatest generation, or whatever. Well I was amazingly wrong about so many things.
I met a man who spent 8 years in the European Theatre during WWII. He left home when he was 18, and came home when he was 28. I cannot imagine that. 10 years. This was a time before the internet, before consistent overseas phone calls. A time when it was not an exaggeration or a Jerry Bruckheimer movie to say, THE WORLD IS AT WAR. Literally every surface on the planet had a war occurring.
I thought about these stories, and mix them with the stories I have had the good fortune of hearing from survivors of Auschwitz and Dachau, and I thought about the word that we throw around here…COMMUNITY.
I thought about what community is, how you see it, how it manifests itself. I am fond of saying “at the end of the day”, and these veterans are a real at the end of the day sort of group. Yeah, I may not dig the whole set of values from my grandfather’s generation in regards to many things, and yeah, the politics that get America into war and the leadership of this country still boggles my mind…
But at the end of the day, these are young man who left their home, strapped on a uniform and a weapon, and people SHOT AT THEM. No matter what war you want to point to, we see that without question these are young men putting their lives on the line because they were told to. Regardless of your politics, those young men are something special. At the end of the day, it seems to me that groups like VFW and American Legion halls, they pretty much want to make sure that as these young men grow up, they are protected, and connected to others with a similar experience. I just wrote a word, a word we use here a lot…CONNECTED. Hmm.
So I was left thinking about that act, the act of suiting up and doing those things. How it relates to my community, and directly to me. I think what I took away from them was this, Community requires Sacrifice. Community is a process, and it is not going to go well no matter what you want.
I think that if we think about it, about how we want this city to be this or that, and we want to work to be there…we’ll have to sacrifice. We will have to serve. What that means I am not sure, but I am sure that we have experienced the opposite of it. We have seen people clearly in it for themselves, and then we have seen people trying to build things. We have seen people building actual buildings, building careers based on service, building websites, building companies based on new ideas.
I want to thank those men who suited up, and fought for freedom, and fought for me, and helped each other. I won’t back off of my political high horse leanings, but thank you for teaching me that you have nothing to do with the things I oppose. You just showed up.
I think about our community, and I think about how we all can sacrifice things, and they can make us better. How less of this right now, leads to more of that later. Maybe that later is our kids, and maybe that is something you want to consider.
I am fond of the first inaugural address from President Lincoln:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
I hope that the better angels prevail.
Marcus Nelson said:
Well spoken Dino - though I’m not sure you’re as, “left-wing nutcase” as you may wish to appear. You’re a passionate man who just wants to see change, just like the rest of us. Sometimes change needs to take to “extreme” so that one day, it will meet reality somewhere in the middle.
I too had a bit of a surreal military experience this weekend. My Grand Father-In-Law passed away. He served in WWII as a Tech Sergeant in the Pacific. Later he trained young boys how to be men in battle and upstanding citizens back home. A rather forgotten and noble cause if you ask me. We could all learn to be a little bit more honorable, respectful.
Over the last few years, our family has watched this once strong and capable man wither into an elderly, forgetful man - a mind imprisoned in his own body. Sad really, but so goes the course of life - so it was with somewhat relief to have him finally rest in his fight with Alzheimer’s.
The funeral was an oddly happy place, with relatively few tears. Mostly because they had been shed long before, but what was most prevalent were the laughters at stories and storytellers whose commentary on his life were rich with character & humor. He was a good man.
Afterward we drove to the cemetery to bid our farewell only to come upon a group of soldiers waiting to pay their last respects. They had a small military procession followed by a 21 gun salute.
Finally, a man who had obviously seen much more life that I, limped over to our Grandma. The man had taken a hit to his left side as both his arm and leg were considerably shorter than the right. He spoke with a voice of honor, but garbled with the scars of some battle long ago.
Then he presented her with a flag and a number of medals (among which was a Bronze Star).
It was a bit overwhelming at that point.
I think sometimes we get distracted by things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. We worry about Gas prices, house payments and the economy.
And while these are not small issues, they cause us to forget what really matters:
People.
November 12th, 2007 at 10:37 am #
Tom Neal said:
My dad hit Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day as an infantry sergeant. Can any of us even begin to imagine that, even given all the war movies we’ve seen? His first night in France was spent hunkered in a latrine ducking endless fire overhead … “any port in the storm” he’d say. Some weeks later he took a hit and never walked the same thereafter. Like many vets of those days, he did not speak often of his experiences … only much later in life did he start to open up about it. But, let us not forget that it wasn’t only men who sacrificed; both in the war theater and back home, women gave their all to provide medical services, logistical and moral support, intelligence gathering, and keeping the wheels of industry turning on the home front, while also keeping their families going (all this, at a time when women “belonged in the kitchen”). Veterans Day is a good thing.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:01 am #