RANDOM NOTES by Scott Morgan: Remembering heroes at the Honor Roll in New Egypt.
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One of the most fascinating and frustrating abilities children possess is their ability to teach the rest of us things when we least expect it. Case in point, Jenny.
Jenny is a little girl whose age I’m unsure of and whose hair is curly and blonde. At least the parts that stuck out of her white bicycle helmet were curly and blonde.
I met Jenny outside the American Legion Hall on Meadowbrook Road in New Egypt. I was reading the Honor Roll, a glass-fronted monument of nearly 230 names, honoring those who fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. She came up to the glass and pressed her fingers against it, staring at one spot for a long time. She pointed to the name of her step-grandfather, she told me. One of the soldiers from the Korean War. And she had come to say hello.
I choked. I wondered if this man had ever met my Uncle Bill. If either had ever saved the other’s life. Or even saved the other’s place in line.
Given that nearly 50 years had obviously separated Jenny from the Korean War, I’d assumed she had never met the man behind the name behind the glass. By the time Jenny hopped on her bike and sped away, I was struck with the same sad pride I feel on Memorial Day. For me, this monument had instantly become a giant, multi-faced headstone. And I began to reverently grieve for the dead.
Then Jenny came back. I asked her if she had ever known anything about her step-grandfather. She looked at me with perfectly innocent eyes and told me the only thing she knew for sure was that her step-grandfather had made it home. That his name was not behind the glass as one of the war dead, but rather as one of those fortunate enough to have made it back alive.
As Jenny sped off again, I felt cheated. I had noticed this monument from Main Street, and when I realized what it was (or so I thought), I thanked those whom I had mistakenly assumed had died so that I might sit on their tombstone and write about their sacrifices.
And here they were, alive and well.
Then, as I looked again at those names, I felt ashamed. Ashamed because I had had the nerve to feel cheated about anything. Maybe these names were not, as I had thought, the names of the honored dead. But they were the names of the honored. Period. They were the names of men and women who fought for my very freedom without ever having known my name. Men and women who went to war for their country and made it back alive. Just like Uncle Bill.
Just like Jenny’s step-grandfather.
Jenny taught me something that day, though I’m sure she’ll never know. She reminded me that sacrifice doesn’t have to mean "ultimate sacrifice." She reminded me that quiet reverence for those who fought and lived is just as important as quiet reverence for those who fought and died.
So thank you, Jenny. And Bill. And everyone else whose name is behind that pane of glass on Meadowbrook Road.
Scott Morgan is a staff writer for The Messenger-Press.