SPECIAL MEMORIAL DAY ISSUE

Trading Places

(Would You Trade Your Life for Your Parent's Life?)

In honor of Memorial Day, my wife and I took a ride down a special road—a road to the past. It was the cemetery road above—flanked by a colonnade of American flags. It got me thinking not just about the holiday—but about the men and women it commemorates. Those who gave their time—or their lives—to defend this country, for you and me. As the flags snapped in the crisp wind, the holiday also made me think of something else. How different my life is from my father’s.

Have you ever compared your life, your experiences—your era—to that of your parents? And would you trade your life for theirs? For me, my life has been so much easier than my father’s. The spirit of Memorial Day inspired me to reflect on just a few things he faced in his life.
 

Come ride along with me for just a minute.
 

During my childhood, I recall him painting a picture of the Dust Bowl. “At noon, it was as black as midnight,” he once quipped. During the Great Depression, his parents lost the family farm. So, at sixteen, he had to leave home to find work a few states away on a turkey farm—to survive.

Less than a year after the attack at Pearl harbor, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. “The bow of the Arizona was still sticking straight out of the water and the hangers at Hickam Field were littered with bullet holes when I arrived,” he once told me. “And we knew the bodies of most of the crew were still submerged in the Arizona.”
 
In addition to Pearl Harbor, his tour of duty included stops at Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Eniwetok, and Kwajalein before engaging the enemy at Iwo Jima. He remained in Iwo Jima until the marines took the island. This decisive battle was a turning point in the war.
 
“I was there when we raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi,” he said reflectively. “And when the Enola Gay took off from Tinian to drop the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, I was just five miles away in Saipan.” Shortly after the second atom bomb was dropped in Nagasaki, he was sent there.

But the war would not define his life. After the war, he went on to college, got a degree in accounting, and found work. Later, he married and would have six children, before losing my mom four years after his youngest child was born. He raised his six children alone and worked until retirement.

In retirement, he suffered several mini-strokes and, late in life, developed Alzheimer’s disease.  At age eighty-seven, he succumbed to the disease. Yet, despite the challenges he faced, there were many moments of joy in his life and he remained positive. He faced every challenge with a courage I could not comprehend. Often he said, “That’s just the way it is.” Then he moved forward. We admired him—and the sense of security he instilled in us.

As I drove through the cemetery, now adorned with American flags on every veteran’s grave, I realized while I can’t trade places with my parents, I can honor them by deepening my admiration for the lives they led. I can celebrate that they—and their fellow veterans—undoubtedly made our lives easier. Most of all, I will never forget them—and I will endeavor to keep them alive in the minds of my grandchildren, who never knew them.

Driving out of the cemetery, the flags seemed to salute in the breeze, and the words of Abraham Lincoln never seemed more poignant for those who never came home: “… they gave the last full measure of their devotion …”

This Memorial Day I would like to say to veterans everywhere, “Thank you for your service—your life, and the life you ensured for me."

I’m not sure I would've had the courage to trade places.”

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SOMETHING TO CHEW ON: When you reflect on your parents, what is one of the most profound memories you have of a sacrifice they made for you? When you identify it, celebrate it.
 

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