[Steppes] OT -- Thank A Veteran Not Just Today But Everyday

[AlKudsi at aol.com]

Elec, I do too. I get misty eyed when the colors pass in parade, and bawl 
like a baby during Taps. The last time I heard it was over my father's grave.
 
I've never understood the cynacism of the modern age. I grew up respecting 
the symbols of our country, but even more, what they represented. The 
Constitution. The Declaration of Independence. The Bill of Rights. The Gettysburg 
Address. FDR's "Fear Itself" speech. Kennedy's Inaugural Speech. Martin Luther 
King's I Have a Dream. 
 
I've stood next to the Liberty Bell and felt a presence, and in the 
Constitutional Hall in Philadelphia. I've seen the original Declaration in the National 
Archives. I've stood beneath Abe Lincoln's monument and at the Tomb of the 
Unknown Soldier. By sheer serendipity, I read aloud that portion of Kennedy's 
speech engraved below his tomb to a busload of new citizens who had just come 
from their citizenship ceremony and explained what it meant to me when he was 
assasinated. I must admit, I chickened out at finding the names of two of the 
boys I dated in high school on the Vietnam Wall.  I've stood in the battleground 
at Vicksburg in the early morning haze, and heard the echos of cannon fire. I 
walked the beach at Normandy with my father as he pointed out where various 
of his platoon were killed on D-Day, and laid flowers at their graves in the 
enormous cemetaries honoring the Allied dead just inland. My family visited the 
remains of several concentration camps, including Bergen Belsen that Dad 
helped liberate to honor all the fallen. I served in the Air Force during the 
Vietnam era so that one less of my friends and classmates had to be drafted. 
 
I've also stood in places like the Coliseum in Rome and felt the weight of 
the angry dead, too.
 
Some people say I have an overactive imagination, but I don't think that is 
it. I think the blood spilled in some of those places consecrated them and 
changes them in ways cynics can't understand. 
 
I hope this doesn't sound hopelessly maudlin, but reading the lists of 
families in the Barony who served, and some who still do (thank you, Sebastian and 
Lyneya's son) gives me new hope for our country. Regardless of your political 
leanings, we face emminent peril to our very way of life in the economic 
crisis. If ever there was a time we need to bury our differences and pull together, 
it is now. That service, those deaths will never have been in vain, but we can 
squander and shame them by bickering over petty differences instead of 
focusing our enormous national will on solving the problems facing us.
 
Too long, I know. The late night meanderings of someone just feeling 
philosophical...
 
HL Saqra
Sgt. Jacqualyn Saunders, U.S. Air Force, December 2, 1971-December 1, 1975.