To many of you in the US, I am not very patriotic. I am mindful and critical at times.
But I vividly remember many years ago when my husband and I visited Washington DC. We went there to enjoy some great music and theatre. But strangely enough, the first thing we wanted to do was to visit the Viet Nam Veteran War Memorial. It was like the elephant in the room for both of us. The Viet Nam War was "our" war - our generation's war.
We went there first thing not knowing what to expect - just feeling a need to do so. I myself and I think my husband too was overwhelmed by a granite wall of over 58,000 names. At first we didn't know what to do. Then we went our separate ways and started to find names of friends. We touched those names carved in granite. They felt so cold. We spent hours there and found so many other names of people we had known separately. We touched the names and they were always cold in the granite. Some of them we didn't even know about. Some of the guys I had dated. Nice guys. Good guys. It hurt to touch their names so cold. My husband told me that he had to touch the names of some high school buddies. Beer drinking at the pizza parlor. Gone now
I lost a lost of friends. But I think of one dear friend the most. Mike Fitzgerald. The sweetest man on earth. He never even got to be a man. He was 19. The draft caught him. He got shot to death on his second day there. He never wanted to go. He had exhausted all his possibilities of escape. At least he never hurt anyone. He died happy knowing that.
I have lost two students so far to the whatever the hell this war is in Iraq. They were both in the reserves. Neither of them wanted to go and both tried to get out of it. Both of them are dead now. I have many more students who are in the reserves who are now serving in active duty overseas and I pray for them every day.
Please let us all pray for those still alive and let us honor and remember with great admiration and love those who died.
But I vividly remember many years ago when my husband and I visited Washington DC. We went there to enjoy some great music and theatre. But strangely enough, the first thing we wanted to do was to visit the Viet Nam Veteran War Memorial. It was like the elephant in the room for both of us. The Viet Nam War was "our" war - our generation's war.
We went there first thing not knowing what to expect - just feeling a need to do so. I myself and I think my husband too was overwhelmed by a granite wall of over 58,000 names. At first we didn't know what to do. Then we went our separate ways and started to find names of friends. We touched those names carved in granite. They felt so cold. We spent hours there and found so many other names of people we had known separately. We touched the names and they were always cold in the granite. Some of them we didn't even know about. Some of the guys I had dated. Nice guys. Good guys. It hurt to touch their names so cold. My husband told me that he had to touch the names of some high school buddies. Beer drinking at the pizza parlor. Gone now
I lost a lost of friends. But I think of one dear friend the most. Mike Fitzgerald. The sweetest man on earth. He never even got to be a man. He was 19. The draft caught him. He got shot to death on his second day there. He never wanted to go. He had exhausted all his possibilities of escape. At least he never hurt anyone. He died happy knowing that.
I have lost two students so far to the whatever the hell this war is in Iraq. They were both in the reserves. Neither of them wanted to go and both tried to get out of it. Both of them are dead now. I have many more students who are in the reserves who are now serving in active duty overseas and I pray for them every day.
Please let us all pray for those still alive and let us honor and remember with great admiration and love those who died.
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