Archive: Opinions

I'm writing this on Veteran's Day, and you'll read it a few days later. To start with a personal chuckle. my granddaughter Serenity (AKA Zen) said today was 'Veteran's Day Observed' as if the 'observed' was not in parentheses on the calendar, but as a normal part of its title. Smart kid; funny and smart, sometimes she not knowing why she's funny.

But in keeping with my curmudgeon outlook (and wishing nothing would change) I really feel we should go back to the name Armistice Day. The day we 'ended' war for all time, the Great War, the war to end all wars. The war memorialized by more monuments in the United States and the free world than any other conflict. The war that gave us F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and the 'lost generation'. The war that gave us even more death and destruction twenty years later.

It's not that I'm ungrateful for the honor bestowed upon us, the survivors of your wars; I am grateful, for delayed gratification is better than none at all. I was in the Lansing Community Library on Veteran's Day, and mentioned to the lady at the desk that they were the only library open on this day. She of course noticed my VietNam veteran's hat and said they had 'gone back and forth' about it, one year closed and drawing complaints, then one year open and feeling they were dishonoring veterans. I let her know that being a long time lover of libraries that I thought it was a wonderful idea to give kids a place to come on a day off from school.

I also mentioned that f we go back to Armistice Day, we could once again commemorate the silencing of the guns, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month: the digit 'one', sent out by simple Morse code ( dit-dit-dit-dit-dit, over and over again) to the weary soldiers in the trenches. The 'ones' signaling: 'It's over...Go home, now.' That minute of silence I desire on November 11th each year can be duplicated around the world: no parades, no speeches. Just a minute of silence. Quiet contemplation. Imagine a former radio guy advocating for sixty seconds of silence at 11AM on November 11th.

While I'm in that space, a word about the VietNam veteran hat I wear. I didn't start wearing one until a few years ago. I'm not sure why I started. Maybe I figured I was old enough now and it was ancient history to be safely, publicly stating that I was a participant in a war that drew sneers (and worse) here in the People's Republic of Ithaca. Well, the occasional 'Thank you for your service' (even a twelve year old said it to me last week) has drawn a grateful 'You're welcome' from me that is humbling. It did take forty plus years, but I'll take it. It gets lonely under this hat that is emblazoned with the three embroidered ribbons that any vet will recognize, and another American's heartfelt words mean much, even if I am still conflicted about my role and place in that sad history. I heard a woman say that it must be hard for someone who has survived combat to hear 'Thank you' or respond 'You're welcome', but that doesn't diminish the gratitude we feel.

I ran into a friend when I first started wearing the hat, and as we sat down with a cup of tea she gently reached over the table, took the hat from my head and placed it on her own graying head. She immediately apologized, but I stopped her after she said 'I'm a veteran of that war, too'. You see, she had suffered greatly from that war, though she had never been in Southeast Asia. She had married a man who had been damaged physically and emotionally by that war, and I knew a little bit of her history and that hell she'd been through. She had previously told me that she 'never wanted to be that lonely again.'

The VietNam veteran hat with service ribbons and two unit crests looked perfect/terrible on her head. Yes, she too was as much a veteran of that war as I was. Mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends; all vets, all hurting, all damaged. Perhaps some of the thanks spoken to me need to be redirected to the women who waited (and even those who didn't) for us to return, not knowing how we, and they, would be changed forever. Some, indeed, are still waiting. And the hat she placed upon her head, "VietNam Veteran" was more appropriate than many could appreciate.

The men who went to war are passing on slowly as the years pass. And, so are the women who knew and loved them. And I still see that woman, that friend, with cup in hand, and the hat perched atop her graying head, with a story in her eyes that the world may never hear. But the story is there, and real. We'll hear her story, maybe, if we allow a moment of silence on Armistice Day, when the guns fell silent, and we all came home.

Thanks for listening.

v14i44