My gruff-as-sandpaper neighbor just caught me in the yard to talk about riding with the Rolling Thunder motorcyclists in their annual Memorial Day parade around the National Mall. But when the parade was over, he drove on home instead of parking and walking with the thousands of others to the Vietnam Memorial.
I've done it three times and I cry every time, and I'm just not going to put myself through it again," he said.
We've been neighbors for 25 years, so I was embarrassed not to know the reason for this sudden display of sentiment. I asked him to tell his story which had a lot of colorful descriptions of teenage hijinks but boiled down to this quote:
We grew up as the Four Musketeers. We learned to do everything together. But they were two years older. When they enlisted, I couldn't go with them because I was too young."
All three died in separate places during the Vietnam Tet Offensive of 1968. My neighbor's mother immediately saw to it that he would be ineligible if his draft number came up.
For 46 years, he cannot forget the missing lives that are not being lived beside his own.
I understand. I'm sure most of you do, as well. You have a grandparent you never knew because of WWII or the Korean Conflict. Or you have people who were in your lives just recently who are gone because of the Middle East or Afghanistan wars. Or you have so many other relations and so many other places where they died. I sometimes wonder if those of us who served in uniform may be even more aware of the contrast between our lives and those we knew who never got back home to raise a family, pursue a career, go on vacations or worry about retirement savings. Every year, I find whatever way I can to make sure to say the names of my three schoolmates who didn't return to my little Missouri Ozarks home town.
Jerry Petty, Alan Ruddell, John Hanson.
Their names are engraved in the wall of the Vietnam Memorial. We were high school football teammates and fellow welders at the local steel plant. Jerry, Alan and John. I hope you have a chance this week to say to others the names of the people you knew who are being honored today. We dare not stop remembering them and saying their names.
Have you noticed that the older we get, the more we truly begin to understand the enormity of the supreme sacrifice of the men and women we honor today for their service to their country. And let's not kid ourselves about why they put themselves in a position for that sacrifice. It was because their country asked them to do it -- and they did it FOR THEIR COUNTRY. They may or may not have believed in -- or even understood -- the military reasons for what they were doing. But in the end, they did it because their country asked them.
On a day like today, we especially want to think about whether we who are privileged to live as civilian citizens are doing the work to preserve and protect the national community that these fallen countrymen died for.
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
