Veteran's Day, celebrated last weekend with a parade in downtown Pea Ridge and on Monday with an assembly in the High School, was a warm fuzzy for me for multiple reasons. It is the kind of reminder of our nation's heritage and the Spirit of America that makes all of us proud to salute the Stars and Stripes.
Businesses run ads celebrating Veteran's Day sales in newsprint and on television which helps us remember that lots of young men and women gave their lives for our freedom and many who survived years of combat returned home with physical and mental disabilities. We are, and will continue to be, blessed with the attitude that makes America the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
A lady asked me at the parade, during a quiet period, if I was a veteran and thanked me for "my service."
It shocked me to think of myself as having been a part of our nation's history in a way long forgotten for many reasons. Time does change things, and us along with them. It has been 62 years the 20th of this month since I was discharged from the Air Force. The years in the service benefited me far more than any formal education or anything a young man from Sugar Creek could ever have imagined.
It is difficult for me to think of my service as a sacrifice when all the giving was a gift to me.
A brief period in the Bentonville Battery of the National Guard and the acknowledgement that we needed to "grow up," led three of us to join the Air Force in 1954. We got to see the sands of Texas, sweat in Mississippi's hot summer and then two of us were sent to the northern tip of Michigan for the winter wonderland of shoulder-high snow falls.
Life is what you make of it and without the military, the choices I had to choose from on Sugar Creek were few. The military offered me an opportunity to see our nation's roots in Boston, Mass., and stand at the foot of the statue of the Minute Man on the Green of Lexington, Mass. They even tried to teach me to teach. I got to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and saw the early computer model in their facility and even walked on the Harvard University campus. I met my sons' mother while giving directions to some out-of-state school teachers who wanted directions to the Concord Bridge.
The nearest I came to making a sacrifice was volunteering to go to Alaska during the final year of my enlistment. The decision allowed me to save money for my decision to go to college. There is nowhere to spend money on a remote mountain top Air Force installation not even called a base. It was a satellite facility with RADAR during the Cold War with Russia.
Given these opportunities, and the G.I. Bill that provided the basis for my engineering degree, how could I, or can I, feel anything like a sacrifice on my part?
The Air Force gave me a roof over my head generally three meals a day and helped me grow up. How could I feel anything other than humbled by all the people who really sacrificed some of themselves to make my experience possible?
No, I haven't forgotten -- just daily thank our nation's heritage for the opportunity it gave me. I don't always think of myself as contributing to our nation by serving in the military because the service gave me far more than I sacrificed for it.
•••
Editor's note: Leo Lynch, an award-winning columnist, is a native of Benton County and has deep roots in northwest Arkansas. The opinions expressed are those of the author. He is a retired industrial engineer and former Justice of the Peace.
Editorial on 11/13/2019