|
|
|
| | |
|
|
|
My sister and brother in law lost their beloved 22 year old nephew in Baghdad this month. He was a Marine on special security patrol. He was very sick, running a high fever, but did not want to make a fuss since he felt called to always being on duty to protect his fellow Marine. Apparently he was so sick that he died back at the base, probably from congestive heart failure, but the autopsy results are not yet in. His father is angry and wants to know why his son did not get the medical attention he so desperately needed. And we all have to wonder if he died due to lack of sufficient support.
My dad was a Marine in World Wart II. He flew very dangerous missions in the South Pacific as a crew chief. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross and we always had a bumper sticker on our old Dodge that said, “Once a Marine, Always a Marine.” My 18 year old son, who never knew my father because he died young, has a bumper sticker on his Dodge truck that says “Semper Fi US Marine Core”. I just discovered this the other day. I am touched and proud.
Last weekend, I had the house to myself on a Friday night, while my stepdaughter and husband were out on a Daddy date. I was sitting on the bed watching the Public Television's Jim Lehrer News Hour, when they did the roll call of the military that lost their lives in Iraq that week. They silently show their photos with their name, rank, age and hometown. Ritchie Quill, my sister’s nephew appeared on the screen and I gasped then sobbed, overcome with emotion, the war came home to meet me that day.
Then last week, Jane Doroff, Director of Senior Nutrition, and I had the once a year privilege when we go to Portrait Artist Harvey Henningsen‘s studio to view the portrait photos he took of three of our Meals on Wheels clients. One of the clients was Jane’s 87 year old neighbor who has recently been on Meals on Wheels. Gary was also a World War II veteran, a navy man who was in combat in the South Pacific. Jane had the bright idea of bringing in a folded flag and in some of the photos Gary was holding the flag. Harvey put up on the screen a photo of Gary holding the flag over his heart with a look in his eyes that told you he was back “there” again on that boat in the Pacific. Once again I was overcome and did not hold back the tears. (See page 5 of this month's Sonoma Seniors Today to see this picture.)
When my son David has talked to me about joining the Marines, I have said that I would be very proud if he did, but please wait until this war is over as I could not bear to lose him.
|
| |
| War exacts a horrible price, and I have often thought that the best way of settling our world conflicts would be to appoint grandmothers to special councils, one grandmother for each one million people that lived in a country. Let the grandmothers figure it out, and I can assure you, we would have a lot less wars. You may say “what a silly, simple solution to a complicated problem”, but I say consider this,….grandmothers have given birth and watched their offspring give birth, they know the meaning and sacredness of life. And grandmothers have lived long enough to know that violence does not solve disputes, it only resolves immediate crisis for a time being. And women continue to be marginalized in most parts of the world, and therefore have a deeper understanding of prejudice, injustice and oppression.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States was the commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II. As the President, Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. He watched with pleasure the development of his "atoms for peace" program--the loan of American uranium to "have not" nations for peaceful purposes.
Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace in the goodness of time.
I leave you now with this inspiring quote from former Supreme Commander and President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron”.
|
| |
|
| |
| Comments |
|
| |
|
