Thoughts from Dr. Joe

So We Don’t Forget!

It was 1990. I was traveling the country like a hobo, following the footsteps of Lewis and Clark, sleeping in wheat fields under the stars, living off the land, and learning what I could learn along the way.

One crisp October morning I was sitting in a mom and pop diner near the Lochsa River, south of Lolo Pass on the border of Idaho and Montana; writing in my journal.

The diner was filled with locals, ranchers, and cowboys; readin’ papers, talkin’ of the weather and the price of soy. On the walls hung tattered pictures of old soldiers who had served in America’s wars from the ‘First’ to Vietnam.

Staring at the pictures, I was overwhelmed by the strangest sensation. It was as if those lifeless faces staring endlessly into space were attempting to express to all who gave a backward glance an important admonition. What were they trying to say?

I was drawn to wander the room and read the names and the stories on each picture. I was captivated by their eyes and it struck me that there are no unwounded soldiers who served on the battlefield.

I was wearing my ol’ jungles ... boots and all, with my bush cover pulled down my forehead so as not to sponsor too much eye contact. I wanted to respect the sovereignty of the locals and I sensed that the pictures that hung on these walls were placed there as a memorial. I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I took my time and read every picture in the place.

The waitress brought my stack of blueberry pancakes and poured me another cup of black tea. There were no chai lattés in that part of the country! On the far side of the counter this big ol’ cowboy turns in my direction and blurts out, “Who were you with?”

“Kilo, 3/5 (Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment) ... and you?”

“Was with Delta, 1/9!”

“Hmm,” I thought to myself, “the walking dead.” I knew of his regiment’s heroics and sacrifices. I asked him why the pictures were on the wall. “So we don’t forget,” he said.

This Veterans Day is a bit more personal to our family. On 26 May 2005, we lost a great friend in Iraq, Major Rick Crocker, USMC. So we don’t forget, Kaitzer and I weave stories of Rick into our daily conversation. It is important to us that our children maintain a connection to him and also to the men and women who sacrificed for our country.

From reverence to our veterans comes the miracle of connectedness. Such an outpouring of reverence connects us to friends, family members and neighbors who have risked their lives to protect us. Our children then inherit a community shrouded in reverence whose foundation is solidified by the values that our servicemen fought for. Without reverence, our children will have little commitment to society; without reverence they will not know how to respect themselves and each other; without reverence they won’t know how to learn reverence.

It’s a simple matrix that can begin by taking the time to teach our children the importance of connecting to those who have served. If we do not do this, then our democracy, which often follows the razor’s edge, will begin to atrophy.

Abraham Lincoln said, “It is for the living to do the unfinished work that those who have served so nobly advanced.” Thus, out of reverence, their true memorial is the nation and culture that our children create from the sacrifice of our veterans.

I never got the name of the cowboy at the end of the counter but his message, “So we don’t forget” resonates within my very soul. Well, that’s exactly what those lifeless pictures were trying to say. Perhaps John McCrae’s poem, “In Flanders Field” is their final soliloquy: “If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders Fields.”

The big ol’ cowboy at the counter lifted his eyes and fixated on me. “Anything that boy wants; it’s on me”, he said. “Thanks,” I whispered. He nodded, paid the bill -- and then some -- and left as quietly as he came.

I wanted to talk and embrace this big ol’ cowboy and I think he felt the same way too. He knew what I desperately tried to understand. But that moment was lost and all that I have are a few entries in my old travel journal with these words scribbled at the bottom: “So we don’t forget!”