What does Commitment, Service & Citizenship Mean?
Why Did those who’ve served stand up?
Why were they there?
Why did they step forward?
Billy Kanell, a young kid from a little town southwest of Poplar Bluff, stepped forward during the Korean War…. Falling on a grenade to save his comrades….. then unbelievably pulling another grenade under his body before the end.
Gen. Jim Livingston was a Marine company commander in Vietnam, who, though wounded three times over the course of the day’s actions and finally unable to walk, directed his company to take more than 100 enemy bunkers and then support another Marine company to protect them from being overrun. Then he refused evacuation… until the men of his company were safely able to withdraw.
You know what…. They’d probably say they were just doing their jobs… what they were called & trained to do.
However, I’d argue they had a vision. Was it some type of elaborate vision of fireworks and Presidential citations?
Almost assuredly not.
In all likelihood, it was a vision of their families, their girls, their wives, their homes and their communities, their life….
“Back in the World” …. As we called it in Vietnam.
And, of course their friends, their comrades in arms out in the field…. Manning the line next to them, jumping out of the chopper, sitting in a muddy fox hole …. Or tramping across miles of frozen ground.
When push comes to shove, this is what filled their minds and hearts when they stepped up.
Was there a limit to their commitment, their service, their willingness to protect their families and loved ones, their friends and communities, their values and culture, their freedom to worship and work, to choose how they wished to live their lives, to choose their representatives and public servants and the laws they would live under?
They might not have been able to put it into words…. But I would argue, that freedom, that vision is what impelled them… impels us…. To step up to commit… to serve…. In whatever way we can.
And that vision is epitomized in the 160 year tradition and story of commitment & service of our Stars & Stripes!
We must do whatever we can, whatever God lets us…
To re instill this vision …. In our communities….. in our youth…. In our nation!
Can we do it?
With your…. And God’s help!
