I want to tell you about my father-in–law, a World War II vet, who came home from the beaches of Okinawa with several purple hearts. He didn’t come home, beating his chest and saying look at me. He came home and took up his place, right back in society where he left off before the war. A proud but humble man for his part of that hard fought victory. He had to have seen some terrible things and lived through some terrible times, after all he was wounded many times but in the years I knew him he never talked about that. He had a family to raise and a business to run and that was the crux of his efforts. I had many other relatives that came home from that war under similar circumstances and they pretty much acted the same way. The war was over and although they never forgot that they had once been a soldier, they quit being a soldier. They gratefully took the accolades that were offered them on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, as well they should have, but never sought them out and the only uniform they wore was the uniform of the day. They wanted to put the war behind them.
I was always told that all of us were as good as the next person but never one bit better. That some of us may have done some noteworthy things in our lives but that in itself didn’t make you any better then anyone else. You need to live your life in the present and not in the past. What you did ten years ago does not give you a pass to quit living your life honorably. Humbleness, trumps narcissism every day of the week.
When I was in the Fire Service I had a woman tell me one day that she didn’t have much respect for police and fire people because they thought they were somehow special. I was momentarily taken back by that remark and later after thinking it over; I thought someone who was in public service and shooting off his or her mouth must have put her off. Most people that are in those jobs have to work hard at being regular people too, because the brass you are wearing, often times says you are something special, when those who do it, in their hearts, know they are not.
I went ice fishing once with three other men. A priest, a cop and a printer and all of them friends of mine. In the course of our conversation that day in the fish house I mentioned we should be well prepared for any emergency with a firefighter a cop and a priest in attendance. There was a moment of silence when I suddenly realized that I had put three of us out there in the limelight but forgot about my friend Jerry who was the printer and a very good man. For me it was embarrassing and I had no way to really rectify it without making things worse then they all ready were. It was Jerry who broke the ice, when he said. “Someone will need to tell the world about you hero’s.” I learned a valuable lesson that day at someone else’s expense when it came to self-importance. My father-in-law was a war hero but he didn’t want to be. He just wanted to be my father-in-law, my wife’s dad, and our kid’s grandpa. He considered it an honor to have served his country and he wanted to just leave it at that.
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