|
 A
few weeks ago, I submitted my father-in-law Jack Shannon for
the Department of Veterans Affairs' Veteran of the Day
feature. He is the poster child for “war hero” – he jumped
out of planes, took fire, mourned fallen brothers in arms
and wielded his M1 carbine to take out enemy forces
advancing southward into the Republic of Korea. He wore the
uniform for two years and two days, and when he came home,
he hung it up, started a family, and got on with carving out
from his youth his piece of the American dream. He passed
away in 2014, and would have been 87 on Nov. 1. On behalf of
my wife and our family, I wanted to honor his life by
honoring his service, and the Veteran of the Day feature let
me do just that.
I'd also like to honor my dad, who
also passed away a few years ago, and who also served in the
Korean War. He was in the Air Force, and his short career
was just as colorful as my father-in-law's, but in a more
sordid way. He enlisted when he was 17 to escape a difficult
home life, with a neglectful mom and an overbearing
step-dad.
He couldn't have known it at the time, but
his technical training put him on the ground floor of the
nascent computer industry. His job was to work on room-sized
computing machines that chewed up paper punch cards and spit
out information. To help him troubleshoot problems and be
more efficient in this work, he created his own tech support
manual – a binder of hand-written notes and drawings
detailing repeat problems and how he fixed them. The tool
should have been mimeographed and couriered to every station
across the globe, and he should have been promoted for his
initiative and cost-saving efforts. Instead, when a new guy
showed up six months into his tour, Dad simply handed over
the binder and all of his duties, and took up dealing
blackjack at the Officer's Club. Apparently that was
something you could do in the service back then.
The
Devil played well with all of this idle time and cajoled Dad
into other non-career-advancing pursuits. According to my
father, he got himself into relatively petty crimes of
selling black-market cigarettes and helping a buddy try to
fence stolen silverware. There may or may not also have been
an unrealized scheme to smuggle Korean refugees to Japan or
elsewhere. This “freelance work” was certainly not motivated
by compassion and a calling to do humanitarian work; for my
still teen-aged dad-in-uniform, it must have been all about
the won, if not the excitement of simply seeing if he could
pull off deeds of that sort. Whether because of these
schemes or not, Dad had the dishonor of being busted down in
rank at least twice. When I enlisted in the Air Force
several decades later, my 47 college credits started me at a
higher rank than what he separated as.
Dad told me
these stories over coffee just a few years ago. I had just
spent the morning with him at a doctor's appointment at the
VA Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas, where his oncologist
reminded him – and told me for the first time – that while
the chemotherapy for his lung cancer was slowing the growth
of his tumors, it was all toward borrowed time. I wasn't
ready to hear that, and Dad probably wasn't ready to talk
about it, either. So instead, our conversation drifted to
something enduring and endearing to each of us: our shared
experience in uniform.
When I enlisted in 1995, like
father, like son, it was for all the wrong reasons – though
I had weaker excuses: I was simply an aimless college
student compelled to drop-out because I was broke. The Air
Force was my best opportunity to make some money, learn a
fall-back trade and get the G.I. Bill to resume my studies,
if and when I ever did find myself. Integrity, Service and
Excellence had to be painfully drilled into me at basic
training. Along the way, like my Dad, I grew up a lot: I
finished my degree and earned a commission. I deployed a few
times – and returned home with my own stories. I have raised
a family, and today, I wonder if my sons will enlist – and
if either does, I wonder what stories they'll have to share
with me?
Though I left the active duty in 2007, I was
drawn back to service in 2013 – for all the right reasons,
including patriotism, a desire to serve, pride and esprit de
corps. I was accepted into the Missouri Air National Guard,
and today, when I'm not serving my state and my nation, I
work for the VA, helping doctors and nurses and social
workers and clerks find and access the best-quality
education and training programs to help them remain the
best-qualified experts to care for today's Veterans. It's
been a great ride so far – and it's one that I'm glad to
still be on.
No one here gets out alive; on Dec. 23,
2016 Dad would have been 77. I love him all the more today;
simply for who he was: a hard-working, stoic, introverted
man of high principles – but also, for who he was then – and
by nature, who he must always have been: a rogue scoundrel
doing his simple best in every moment to make his way
through life.
Similarly, the VA honors all Veterans,
for – or perhaps despite – all of their stories: heroic,
sordid or “meh.” My dad eked out a general discharge from an
occasionally honorable enlistment. My father-in-law was a
snake-eater's snake eater – though he did lose his taste for
ham after always finding maggots in his C-rations.
Meanwhile, I've had an above-average career as a
white-collar military professional, serving on the fringes
of nearly 20 years of constant warfare. And yet, the VA
honors us all: for who we are, for what we did – and
sometimes even despite what we did. All because we served.
I'm extremely proud of my service to my nation in
uniform, and that both of my fathers served before me. But
more than that, I'm proud that United States has established
a Department of Veterans Affairs, whose work force – as I
know first-hand – is today and forever dedicated to keeping
the promise first made by President Abraham Lincoln in his
second inaugural address:
“To care for him who shall
have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
By U.S. Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Bishop
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2017
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