A Note on Veterans Day

When I was around six years old, my grandfather died.  His is the first funeral I can remember attending.  He was a veteran of World War II, a man who was old enough not to go but enlisted anyway because doing so was right.  I understand that he fought bravely and was awarded medals for doing just that.  What I remember from his funeral, though, is the American flag draped over his casket.  Even then I intuited the power of this symbol.

Today that image and the feelings of pride and wonder that it engendered remain seared in my mind and in my gut, for the feeling was visceral.  I recall soldiers removing the flag and folding it carefully, ceremoniously, and presenting it to, I presume, my grandmother.  And I recall thinking even as a six-year-old that serving one's country is supremely honorable and courageous.  I thought then that I too ought to serve the United States of America as my grandfather had.

Of course time and experience have a way of changing even the best laid plans.  I toyed with the idea of enlisting when I was in high school but a girlfriend and college got in the way.  I couldn't abide the sacrifice or the commitment.  I toyed with enlisting after I graduated college (minus the girlfriend), perhaps attempting to get into Officer Candidate School.  Again, I declined to commit, beset with a sort of shiftless existential lassitude.  Eventually I entered law school and again contemplated serving my country, this time as a potential member of the JAG Corps.  Yet again I lacked the courage of my convictions and failed to live up to the example my grandfather set.

Despite my own failings, I remain to this day awed by those who have and had the courage to serve.  Nearly every day I pass by Wood National Cemetery.  Familiarity has not dulled the respect and appreciation I feel when I spy row upon row of white headstones marking the graves of those who have served.  When I take my son to hockey practice at the Pettit Center I often see men and women from the different ROTC programs in Milwaukee testing their fitness and training.  Each time I see them I am grateful they have the strength to follow the courage of their convictions and am proud of their commitment to one day serve this country; this despite the fact that they are strangers to me.  And when I see an American flag up close, near enough see the texture of the fabric, I am transported to my grandfather's casket and the symbol draped over it which reminds me that the choice to serve is not made for status or heroism, but instead is made for duty and sacrifice.  A choice made, like my grandfather's, because it is right.  So I say to everyone who made or will make the choice to serve:  thank you.