A veteran of WWII, a pilot, lived next door to us when the kids were growing up. He had some amazing stories to tell. Every Veteran’s Day, the kids and I would make cookies, a cake, cards, or even red and blue Jello one year, and go over to deliver them. He was nearing ninety and didn’t get out much anymore, but he always had a big smile and a welcome for our children. He appreciated the fact that they were honoring him as a veteran.
We wanted our kids to know our history as a nation, so our vacations often included museums and battle fields as part of our itinerary. Places like Patriot’s Point in Charleston, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and Chickamauga/Chattanooga National Military Parks were places for us to explore and have fun while learning about our past. One of my personal favorites was the Pensacola Naval Air Museum, where actual veteran pilots told their stories as they guided us through our tour. Kent and our middle one once spent the night onboard the USS Alabama on an RA camping trip, visiting the Pensacola Air Museum the next day. When our oldest studied abroad in London her junior year in college, we visited her and toured the British War Museum and the Churchill War Rooms, giving us a different perspective of our history.
My dad contributed to my love of military history. His own dream of being a military pilot never came to fruition due to a serious injury to his foot as a child. Unable to enlist, he did his best to instill an appreciation of our military into my brother and me. I remember the Air Force’s Thunderbirds flying over our house as they trained, rattling the dishes in the cabinets as they broke the sound barrier, and attending many air shows featuring the Navy’s Blue Angels. Dad gave us fact after fact and story after story of military air support. He was fascinated by it all. He also always encouraged us to be thankful for those who served and died to insure our freedom.
When my own three children reached junior high and high school, they brought home school assignments for essays and projects involving interviews of veterans. With each of these assignments, all of us learned more about our history and about the people who were our friends and neighbors who had served. More recently, with Auburn High School’s Veteran’s Project, I followed the daily social media posts as the students endeavored to record the pictures and stories of countless veterans. Often, posts included comments and memories from the soldier’s friends and family. By putting faces and names to the information, these students succeeded in making history personal, not simply facts recorded and stored away somewhere.
I am thankful for the experiences provided by my parents, for the ones we experienced with our kids, and for the ones provided by the teachers and students of Auburn High School. Experiences like these teach and remind us that we stand on the shoulders of others. By learning our history, we have the opportunity to realize that our freedom came at a cost. They teach us to appreciate where we are as a country and the sacrifices others have made to get us here. Looking back at our past, we can see that our ability to think and believe as we choose is a privilege and we should never take it for granted.
As a nation, we as citizens, are individually and corporately a work in progress. We are diverse in our ethnicities, our backgrounds, and our beliefs, and we often clash at the deepest levels over the things each of us hold dear, but, we all share a debt to those who have paid and are paying the cost to give us the ability to have and express those beliefs. We all owe a debt of gratitude for the ability even to disagree with the way we got to where we are.
History is as it is. The past cannot be changed. We have the benefit of hindsight in looking at the results of decisions made and beliefs held by those who came before. Hopefully, we can be big enough to judge them in the context of their time, taking into consideration that none of us are without sin, and that the very condition of being human means that we are imperfect, all of us. That being said, since we do have the benefit of hindsight, we do have the responsibility to right wrong as much as is within our power, and we should be willing to learn from our past while realizing that we also are not perfect and we will also make mistakes.
Mandisa, TobyMac, and Kirk Franklin’s song, “Bleed The Same,” says:
“If we’re gonna fight
Let’s fight for each other
If we’re gonna shout
Let love be the cry
Let’s stand united!”
I agree. The song is meant for humanity as a whole, but it is relevant to us in our nation at present as well. This month, and always, I am grateful to those who have paid, and are paying, the price for me to live in a country where I am free. So, to all the members of our military, veterans and active duty, my youngest included,
“Thank you for your service.”
Bleed The Same, Songwriters: Chris Stevens/Mandisa Hundley/Bryan Fowler/Toby McKeehan, copyright Capitol Christian Music Group
