SAND & DAD, A MEMORIAL DAY STORY:

I got this vial of sand from one of the many wonderful educators that I am privileged to work alongside. She got the sand from a beach in France once codenamed Omaha.

My Dad came back from his tour in the Korean conflict. His day is Veterans Day, not Memorial Day, so I’ll ask that you indulge me. Like so many veterans of the World War 2/ Korea era, my Dad didn’t talk much about his service or seek acclaim for it. They had a role to play & they played it. Those men & women would have fit in perfectly with Belichick’s New England Patriots whose mantra was, “Do Your Job”.

The little my dad shared with me included: Christmas in a foxhole with his only companion, an ever emptying bottle of scotch & a promise to God ( a promise my dad kept) if He’d get him home. A terrifying night spent with a few other soldiers, each behind a machine gun, waiting for the Chinese to come over a hill with final instructions ringing in their ears, “If they come, try to last 30 minutes.” The icy hell of a Korean winter that forever left a spot on his cheek vulnerable to the little winter chill we get in Tennessee.

A night on sentry duty when weapons had to be fired, seeing a shadowy figure fall, never knowing if it was his bullet, if the bullet was final, if the figure was a hard core lifer of a soldier or a kid, just like him, scared & wanting only to make it through the night, only wanting to go home.

The 1988 Summer Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea. I watched the opening ceremonies on TV with my dad. As the camera panned the city surrounding the stadium my dad uttered, “..it looks nothing like it did when I was there…” I asked him if he’d like to go back.

His simple “yes” surprised me. His follow up still haunts, “there’s a few boys I’d like to see & tell goodbye to.” He then gave me the look, through misty eyes I only remember seeing 3 other times, that fathers give their sons when a subject & its discussion have concluded. In the 25 years from that day until he passed, I never brought it up again.

The soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifices in Korea & World War 2 & from Lexington Green to present day will never hear expressions of thanks. I offer thanks to veterans when I  can, especially after losing my dad & father-in-law, but it took an “attitude adjustment” from the man that gave me my last name to understand why I should.

When I was 18 or 19, thinking myself witty, debonair, & urbane, a clothes horse in my Izod popped collar under a button down, showered in Grey Flannel cologne & …ignorance, I commented on a man in my church wearing too wide a tie with a past its day leisure suit. Words I soon regretted. My dad was a compassionate soul but didn’t take to foolish talk, especially from one of his own. He could be decidedly non-diplomatic in his responses. I received one of those responses in the church parking lot in the company of two deacons, one was my Sunday School teacher.

My father informed me that early on June 6, 1944, the man in the suit & tie hung over France with only God & a parachute canopy above him & a welcoming committee from the German army & a flooded countryside below him. He, like my father, had experienced the hotter than 12 yards of Hell thing known as combat. That his sacrifice allowed me to express my “dumb@$$” comments & if I had any further thoughts they should stay between my ears & behind my lips.

On Sunday June 6, 1994, with more miles in my rear view mirror & before church, I watched on TV as some men parachuted into France, near Omaha Beach, as they had done 50 years before to celebrate the golden anniversary of D-Day. After the church service, I found that hero in the suit & tie & said thanks. Through tears, he thanked me & said there were a lot of white crosses on top of a lot of boys forever 18 or 19, at places called Omaha & Utah & Gold & Juno & Sword that deserved the real thanks. Those forever 18 & 19 dressed in olive drab, forever resting, cloaked in the courage of sacrifice.

Those 18 or 19 year old men “Mac” shed tears over 50 years later, those fellows my dad never offered a goodbye but caused his eyes to well, their hourglass ran out of sand too soon, & we should be grateful.

The sand they gave, that ran out on Normandy’s sand & in Korea’s icy mud & Khe Sanh & Gettysburg & over trenches in a Sopwith Camel before we had the decency to number our world wars through to present day allows us so much. To vote. To think differently. To pray differently. To let one side try to politicize God & the other side to try to keep God out…of everything. To let this still be the greatest country on this spinning orb, in spite of the red & blue disasters we have to elect clogging up the political process.

Today’s a day we honor those that lost their sand & returned under a flag. Those like Mac & my dad returned but lost pieces of themselves on foreign soil & at home in their silence and that sacrifice is worth remembering too.