Patriotism is borne out of love for one’s country and pride in what its people believe and achieve. In some respects this entire website is a statement of patriotism because its very foundation is erected upon my love for America and an intense pride in what we stand for. I hope you can see it as a celebration of the ideals we were founded upon and everything that makes us great. The subject of patriotism is one that is very dear to me and becomes even stronger as the years go by. Just as an aside; I was born on the Fourth of July. Oh yeah, in my early years people jested about me being a firecracker, my birthday being a holiday, and everyone raising one for my birthday. Back then it was just good fun and I was all in on the fun. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to the realization that Independence Day is truly a special event. An event to celebrate; an event that depicts the greatness of our founding; an event that embodies the exceptionalism of our country, and an event that reinforces the need to preserve everything we stands for at all cost. Now, for me, being born on the Fourth is a source of intense pride and undoubtedly a measure of the love I feel for America.
I was a teenager during the Viet Nam War era when the draft was still in effect. Registering for the draft when I turned 18 was a sobering acknowledgement that I could someday be called to serve and in that find myself in the jungles of Viet Nam. The thought was a little scary! At that time going to college offered an “out” and as such as a freshman I qualified for a II-S deferment. May not have made a lot of sense, but that was the case. Whew! I dodged the bullet for that year. Then in my second year of college somebody came up with the bright idea to base the draft on a lottery system using birthdates to determine the order in which people would be drafted.
I vividly remember lottery day. Those of us eligible for the draft that year (which included me because my II-S deferment was gone) were all glued to our TV sets and breathed sighs of relief as each birthdate was called that wasn’t our own. We got to 50 without my date coming up.., then 100.., then 150.., then 200.., then 250.., and finally at 279 there it was. With heart still in my throat, I thought; “Wow, I’m in pretty good shape here.” I was thinking I may have dodged the bullet yet again and once and for all. Later that day I got together with some of my classmates and my good feeling about where I was in the queue took a big hit when I found out that one of their birthdates came up at number 8. I felt horrible! I felt guilty! Here was someone I knew well that would soon be off to war.
They drafted up through number 215 that year. While I still had a pretty good cushion as far as getting drafted, it still was a year of trepidation and I couldn’t help feeling some sense of guilt for my good fortune. Since then my feelings of guilt have actually become ones of regret. I regret that I did not answer a call to serve my country, and as the years go by, my respect and honor for those who did serve gets stronger and stronger. I try to put myself in their shoes and think, how did it feel to be tromping around in the jungles of Viet Nam, or how did it feel being in one of those landing crafts at Normandy, or how does it feel being in a Humvee traversing some uncharted road in Afghanistan? Hard to imagine; but one thing for sure, I have no doubt that fear is a constant companion. Is it fair? Not at all! Like many things in life our fates are often affected by outside influences. That’s life, that’s the way it is. But I say shame on us if the lottery of life deals us a good number (as it did me) and we squander it. Likewise, shame on us if we allow chance to dictate the path we take.
Sadly, some who went to war did not survive those dreadful events and I have an intense reverence for them. My favorite place to visit in the whole of our country is Arlington National Cemetery and I would love for all of you to have an opportunity to visit there. Row upon row of markers designating the resting places of so many heroes. Stop and be quiet, it’s like you can hear the silence! It speaks to you. It hearkens you to honor a soldier. It tells you how amazing our country is! It tells you how great our people are! It tells you how sacred our freedoms are! And it tells you that we must never ever take our freedoms for granted or refuse to defend them. This place brings tears to my eyes! Then too; the bugling of “Taps”, a 21-gun salute, B-2 flyovers at the Super Bowl, the singing of a heartfelt rendition of our National Anthem, listening to my grandchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and standing as I watch the flag go by at a Fourth of July parade brings tears to my eyes as well. I believe my love for our country is manifested in that reaction!
For those of us who have not, or will not, have the honor of serving in the Armed Forces there are other times when I believe there is a clear manifestation of patriotism; one of those being when America is attacked. I would cite the 1960/1970’s and 9/11 as a couple of periods or events that I can personally relate to. I have distinct and indelible memories of those times and there is no doubt that they played a major role in shaping my deep patriotic beliefs. As I related earlier, the 60’s were a time when racial discrimination and oppression was front-and-center and huge strides were made in confronting and addressing the rights of African Americans and other minorities. Then too; the 60’s and 70’s were a time when the Viet Nam War raged sparking huge anti-war demonstrations and major political upheaval.
People always ask; “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”, and I’m sure most of us recall very vividly where we were and what we were doing. I was in eighth grade. I remember shortly after returning to class from lunch our principle came into the classroom clearly distressed and told us that the President had been shot. Our teacher had an old AM radio at her desk and we all listened in horror as the events were unfolding in Dallas. At some point, probably around 2:00 in the afternoon, we heard the words, “the president is dead”. At first the classroom lapsed into complete silence, followed soon thereafter by students crying and others that were questioning why. It was a Friday afternoon and very little was accomplished over the weekend other than staring at the TV set, fuzzy picture and all. The entire country lapsed into a very somber mood and I can recall seeing Oswald being shot, the majestic funeral procession, John Jr. saluting the casket as the horse drawn carriage passed by, and the eternal flame being lit at Arlington.
The Kennedy assassination was an attack on America. Not how you might typically envision an attack, but it was an attack nonetheless. And it didn’t end with the Kennedy assassination. During the 60’s there were other assassinations including the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Reactions to these murders were varied across the board, but I think in general there was a reaction that this should not be happening in America and it spurred feelings among many Americans that I think were underpinned by their devotion to a country that should be better than that.
The other event I mentioned, 9/11, is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday. Again; where you were on 9/11 is the question that gets asked. I was on an airplane that had departed from Minneapolis on my way to of all places, Washington D.C. I was in the air as the horrific events of that day were unfolding. It’s funny, but after such an event one contemplates scenarios that “could have been” from a very personal point of view. For example, I think about what if the Sears Tower in Chicago had been a target? Might that flight have originated out of Minneapolis and could that flight have been mine? Or how about another situation that I think has a credible probability of being true. My flight was redirected to Detroit while in airspace somewhere over or in the vicinity of Cleveland, Ohio. When I consider the flight path of American Airlines Flight 93, and the timeframe when we were over Cleveland, I think it’s possible that my plane could have been in the immediate vicinity of Flight 93 as the passengers plotted to take back the cockpit, which of course, we now know ended in their certain deaths. In the quiet of night I often think if that were me could I have mustered the courage to do what they did. I don’t know! It’s hard to speculate on how you might react when facing such a fateful decision.
My flight to Washington started out normally and as passengers were enjoying a cup of coffee, reading a book, or working on their laptops the Captain came on over the intercom. He announced that something was happening in New York City and all the airports had been closed. Then probably not more then ten minutes later he came back on to announce that all airports on the east coast were closed and we were being rerouted to Detroit. We passengers gave each other questioning looks, but as a seasoned traveler, I wasn’t necessarily alarmed. These things happen in air travel. That was it, that was all we knew about what was going on. We landed at Detroit and as we were taxiing to the terminal, again as a seasoned air traveler, I observed something I had not seen before. Usually when taxiing, you can observe other flights landing and there is typically a period of minutes between airplanes coming in on a common runway. Not today! As one airplane was touching down you could see another plane approaching the runway close behind. I thought to myself that that was odd and for some reason they were getting planes out of the sky much more rapidly than anything I had ever seen before. About this time I could hear people on their cell phones getting word that planes had hit the World Trade Center(s). Hmmm!, what was going on? We didn’t know any of the circumstances, what kind of planes they were, or what damage they may have caused to the buildings. We had a sense of something being amiss, but the level of detail was only superficial. Since I am a practical person, as others were getting snippets of what was going on in New York, I decided to call my travel agent to have them reserve a rental car because it was already apparent to me that I wasn’t going to D.C. that day and likely would be driving home from Detroit. The agent told me that she had gotten the last car available and I was happy for my good fortune Whew, dodged that bullet!
I don’t remember if my plane got to a gate, or if we deplaned on the tarmac. But deplane we did and in short order I was at the Avis Rental Car lot. The place was mobbed! By now we knew that New York was under a terrorist attack and we also had received word that the Pentagon had been hit. I now understood why planes were landing as if there was a long “V” of geese alighting on a pond. Understand all our information was coming via word of mouth and so the scale and gravity of what was happening was still kind of vague to us. As we were milling around and getting in lines the Avis agent came on the intercom and announced that all cars were booked and in light of the number of people that needed transportation (pretty much everybody); they made an appeal for us to try to find people going to the same destination and in essence form ad hoc carpools. Their hope was that that would then free up as many cars as possible for others to use.
One might think that this process would have been chaos, but actually it was anything but. People called out destinations and others would migrate to them. I was able to team up with three other people whose names (even first names) I can no longer remember. We each had our own stories of that day and it was interesting how all of us seemed to have some sort of connection to the tragedy that was happening in real time. I, of course, was enroute to a city that was hit by the terrorists (Washington DC) and two of my partners had actually departed that morning from, of all places, Boston. Not only had they departed Boston, but it was in the same timeframe (around 8 o’clock) as the two planes that hit the Trade Centers had departed. Eerie! The fourth member of our carpool was on his way to New York. He worked for a financial advisory company whose offices were actually located “across the street” from the Trade Centers. Yikes! Even more intriguing about his story was that he had intended to leave the night before (I don’t remember why he was delayed) and had had a reservation at the Marriott Hotel that was part of the Trade Center complex. Can you imagine?!
As I recall, it took us about twelve hours to travel from Detroit to Minneapolis and for much of the trip our accounting of the events taking place that day was solely from radio broadcasts. Of course that was non-stop and gave us a good sense of what was happening, but I’m here to tell you, you had to see it with your own eyes to really grasp the full impact of the evil that took place that day. For example, the collapse of the towers. I’m an engineer, and for the hours from when I heard it on the radio to when I actually saw it on TV, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how the towers could “collapse”. I couldn’t get it through my common sense filter. We stopped in Madison, Wis. for dinner that night and it was in the restaurant that I finally was able to actually see the planes hit, the buildings collapse, the Pentagon in flames, and the blackened hole in the fields near Shanksville, Pa. It was almost like experiencing the horror all over again. I, as many others, were very unsettled by the events of that day.
Even now I feel many of the same emotions when I see a Kennedy assassination or a 9/11 special or documentary on TV. My feelings may not be quite as intense as they were on the days these events happened, but I feel them nonetheless. Each of us have experiences that shape our lives in many ways and these events certainly shaped mine. They remind me that evil exists in the world; that our way of life in many ways is fragile; that there are forces in the world that resent our way of life; and that we as a nation must be ready at all times to fight to preserve it. I hope my words in this website inspire you to get to know America! And in getting to know America I hope you will feel a sense of pride, come to appreciate its greatness, understand its role and importance in the world, and resolve to protect it at all cost.