SELF-LESSNESS and SACRIFICE

My father is a WWII Vet, 101st Airborne Division, US ARMY. He was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed, and jumped in Normandy on D-Day. He has the scars, the memories, and the Purple Heart to prove it. On May 30 he was invited to go on an HONOR FLIGHT for WWII vets, sponsored by a local VFW post, to Washington, DC to see the monuments, and experience the thrill of being in our capital city. 119 of them (30 in wheelchairs)and their volunteer escorts left Akron-Canton airport at about 6 a.m. for an unforgettable day. After a day of touring, they returned home at about 8:30. The reception to welcome them back was overwhelming for me---I can only imagine how it felt to them. The halls of the airport were lined with hundreds of people of all ages, cheering, waving flags, applauding...it was amazing. There were dozens of small children who had raised money through bake sales to sponsor the flight. There were Viet Nam vets (Rolling Thunder Motorcycle club), paying tribute and honor in a way they themselves did not receive. There were current members of the military, dressed in fatigues, blessing the acts of sacrifice that went before them.

In an extremely self-centered era, this whole experience was amazing. It celebrated self-less sacrifice--in the vets themselves, and in the people who came to honor them. These were not the great and mighty who have memorials built somewhere to individual acheivement. These were ordinary men who became often unnoticed heroes. And the people who gave up their evening (and actually gave up the Cavs game) to come give them a hero's welcome were heroes themselves. They made an incredible impact--one that was not noted by the world, but was forever recorded in the annals of unselfish living. It was unforgettable to me. I read a statement this week that sums up what I saw and experienced: "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." George Eliot in MIDDLEMARCH.