Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Veteran's Day Journey

Last Friday I sat in on the Veteran's Day program performed by the student body of Red Oak Elementary. There was the usual themes and songs from each of branches of service. A rousing and emotional program, and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. For the entirety of the program I thought about my dad, now 93 years old, flying combat missions over Germany at the age of 22 or so. Having to be responsible for 9 other men, wondering every time it was wheels up if he would return both to base and home. He has never talked much about it. I don't think it is the trauma of the missions he flew, but more that Dad never really looks back. He has always dealt with the next moment and doesn't concern himself with the history or the contemplation that brought him to this moment. And now that the memory is failing and the body is grinding to a halt he is thinking of the next moment about final arrangements and making sure there is not going to be a problem for those he leaves behind.

But in the moment of the Veteran's program I reflected on the happenstance of my not serving all those years ago. Of course in those days, no one willingly joined. There was not the sense of national devotion to all things military. My contemporaries were compelled to go via a process called "the draft". For those of you who don't know or remember how this worked, it was known as the lottery. A bad kind. 365 birthdays were dumped in a wheel and whenever your birthday came out of the drawing was your "draft number". At the age of 18 every male was required to sign up for the draft. There were a lot of conversations about what we would do if drafted, the preference of service, and the uncertainty about what that meant. My 18th birthday came towards the end of the Vietnam war. By mid-1972 (I graduated in spring 1972) the US was beginning to pull out of the war. So the draft numbers would have to be pretty low to worry about the prospect of being drafted. All I remember was that while comparing our numbers between a good friend of mine, the number I drew was in the 300's, his was 9. Not good. He joined and never saw time outside the USA. But the idea that one would join out of patriotic duty, or sense of service  was foreign in that moment. While my dad and his contemporaries rushed to the enlistment centers after Pearl Harbor, my contemporaries were looking for loopholes or the most direct route to Canada to sit out the conflict. Theirs was a noble war, ours was a point of national debate and contention. And to summarize what my friend with the bad luck to draw a low number told me later, "you can avoid anything in the military if you learn to use the system". It was a different time and a different war and a different attitude.

As the program wore on I wondered (again) how my life would have been different had I served at the moment of my 18th year. Would I have survived? It is hard to imagine not surviving when there is a 40+ year history since that moment. If I had survived I would have come home a couple of years after a normal college start. Would I have met my bride? Probably not. What would my life have been like without her? I can't imagine it. And all the things that follow, kids, grandkids, jobs, friends, places we have lived, would have been entirely different. Not to mention (and perhaps the most compelling thought string) how would I have been changed by the events? How would I be different? What would my journey look like now? What would my views be on the different journey that I would have traveled? It is almost impossible to imagine because we are the sum of our decisions. And each decision is based on the experiences we alone have had.

Which brings me full circle to the program last Friday. We each travel our own journey. There is no changing the moment just past or the cars in the long train leading up to it. You see the sum of who I am in this moment is less conscious planning and more opening doors that lead one to another until I find myself in this place. Our journey is as unique as our fingerprints. Would I now go back and change the moment of an 18 year old and miss the journey with my bride, my three kids, their spouses, my grandkids, our friends (both old and new), on and on and on? I can't trade and wouldn't if I could. The things I find most precious came to me because of MY journey and the sum of MY decisions. And as I thought of my dad and his journey that included placing his life on the line, it occurred to me that it is part of what has made him important to me. Our journeys were not the same, but it is important that they not be.

My hope is that my journey will reap some of the same results as my dad's journey which included a time of uncertainty over the skies of Germany. Hopeful that the fruit will be compassion, integrity, honor, mercy, faith, and last and certainly not least is a sense of humor about it all. The success of the journey is in the satisfaction we have received. And each of us is the only one who can determine if the journey we have traveled has been worthwhile.

So on this day of honoring our veterans, it is important to note that this portion of their journey has crossed for a moment with ours. But the journeys are all meaningful, all part of who we are, all are important.

Godspeed to those who have gambled it all, in particular the veterans. And more specifically my dad. 1st Lt. Grady B. Jolly.

Don

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Love that Grady Jolly