Honor to the Fallen

Honor to the Fallen

Carole and I stood along with many others outside the Old Post Chapel on Fort Myer Army Base next to Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia and watched as the band of the U.S. Army Old Guard, 3^rd Infantry Division played softly and eight of the Old Guard, honor guard moved with reverence to the Cason which would carry the body of Lt. Colonel Rex Smith to his resting place in Arlington National Cemetery. The six great black horses pulled the Cason followed by the band and the company of men of the 3^rd infantry Division the two miles to the eternal resting place of his remains.

This journey started on October 8, 1936 when Rex Smith, age 14, talked his sister into posing as his mother and signing the papers stating that he was 18 so that he could enter the United States Army. In his first years as an enlisted man his Commanding officer tried to get Rex to attend OfficersCandidateSchool believing that he would make a good Army Officer.  Rex knew if he did this his real age would be discovered and he would be sent home. He was at Wheeler Field in Schofield Barracks on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. He received the Soldiers Medal during that battle for retrieving the fallen bodies of two citizens by going down a 600 foot rope and bringing them back one at a time. By 1943 his age was no longer an issue so he attended OfficersCandidateSchool and was commissioned a Second Lineament. On June 6, 1944 he was with the First Engineer Amphibious Special Brigade as they made the 7:00 A.M., first wave, landing at Utah Beach, NormandyFrance. He retired as a Lt. Colonel in July of 1962 at the age of 40 after having served 26 years in the army. He had a second career as an Inspector in the District Attorney’s Office, San Mateo County, California and retired again in 1978,

At his grave we listed as the Chaplain read the word of God and prayed, then the thundering sound of the 21 guns and the somber playing of ‘The Last Call” taps and watched as the flag he served for 26 years was folded and given to his son. Later at the Officer’s Club at FortMyer we looked at pictures, shared moments with friend from his years in the army and in retirement. In the week in which our Nation celebrates its birth we watched with reverence as honor was paid to one of its soldiers and his remains were placed with the more than 300.000 others who are so honored at Arlington.  God Bless America and God bless the Men and Women who have paid the greatest price for our freedom.

Ivan

 

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Bring the Cloak

While winter in Troas is usually brief it can from time to time become very cold and this was the winter of the North wind and it sweep across the sea and into the homes not prepared for its long stay and bitterness. Carpus had been very ill. The chill of the winter wind and his ageing health had gotten him down and the fever had invaded his body until his life seemed to be slipping away. The tent maker offered his cloak, it was all wool, twice woven, by the hands of Lydia and colored with her beautiful dyes. It was by far his nicest garment but Carpus needed its warmth and the tent maker had to leave. So the cloak remained.

The tent maker had received a letter many month later from Carpus thanking him for his sacrifice, telling of his own healing under its warmth and that of his mother and two of his children in that same fierce winter.

Time had now passed and the long nights in the damp and cold dungeon of Rome chilled every bone in his body. His hands crippled with arthritis and now chilled by the dampness and cold added to his misery. This would be his last letter; time was slipping away so the old tent maker asked his young friend Timothy to be sure and come to see him and to come before winter. Then he asked the faithful Timothy to bring him the cloak, the one he had left with Carpus, the cloak made by the hands of the believer Lydia, colored with her dye and stained with her tears and his blood. ‘Do your best’, he said ‘to get here before winter, bring the scriptures, the parchments and my cloak.’

Oklahoma

As I write this most of America is going to bed with prayers on their lips for the people of Moore and Oklahoma City, Ok.  The latest numbers seem to be saying that more than 51 people are dead with a number of children included in that total. I listened as a first responder recalled pulling the ruble off of a teacher who had three children under her protecting them from the falling school. Such response, unselfish, without regard for their own safety was, I am sure, repeated many times throughout the building where once they taught those children and now they provide protection, even at the expense of their own harm. The pictures of streets where once homes lined the side walks, dogs and children played in the yards, and parents planted colorful flowers to embrace their homes now lie before us as matches broken and spilled out in small piles of what were once the memory makers of thousands of lives. Last night heaven received a million petitions each wishing to know why, desiring to call back the time and make it noon on Monday once more. But time does not turn backward and ‘Why’ has never been answered.

Today the sun will shine and the ‘Why” fades as the acts of unselfish people become evident and thousands from across our land respond to the communities with help, gifts, prayers, and tears. We in America are still strong, we still respond to those who hurt, and our hearts are still touched by the tears of others. Try as you may the goodness inside of our people still rises to the top, our Christian values still show, and our brotherhood is still more together than it is broken. Ivan

I Am New

 

Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life – even though invisible to spectators – is with Christ in God. He is your life.Colossians 3:3

Jesus did not become a man to make us better men; He became a man to show us that we could, in Him, become new.

A member of our church did a solo recently about ‘Not Going There Anymore’. It was not only beautifully done but it had a great message. It said because of Calvary he did not go to the same old places, run with the same old people, and have the same old value. What a powerful truth for all of us. While we do not always practice it our faith really should change us, we should be different.  If the world cannot see the difference in us a Christians what is going to attract them to our Lord? When I completed ‘Boot Camp’ in the navy I was different. Shouldn’t our faith and the transforming power of God make us different from what we once were?  We are now forgiven, we are going to live forever, and we belong to the King.

Ivan

Beautiful Feet

Jim I was thinking about you today…

How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace.  Romans 10:15

They are about as ugly as any I have seen. Black, broken, twisted with 80 years of walking through the jungles of Central American and the stone paths of Mexico. I have seen him witness in the jungle, on the beach, in slums, and beside the road. My friend Jim has spent his lifetime in the service of the King and now I watch as his confused mind worries about not having enough clothes on to go out, yet he is perfectly dressed, but the shadows of his mind refuses to let him leave the nursing home and sinks him deep in tears because life at the moment is too confused for him to handle. It fills my own eyes with tears and shreds my own heart. Carole and I came to assist him yet all of her tender care and my encouraging words seem to fall into some great void through which nothing can pass. But his feet are sure beautiful in the sight of the Lord. Broken and bruised, scared and worn out, but done so for the Heart of God.

Ivan

(Written in the summer of 2010, Jim died in 2011)

Driving In The Rain

 

We had spent too much time being negative, talking about how bad things are and how they are only getting worst. Everyone had an ax to grind and not one had a blessing to share. It was an hour of despair and fretting and sitting on our pity pots talking about how bad we have it and that it is only going to get worst.

As I drove through the rain my heart was shattered for I was thinking about all that we had discussed and how there are so very many problems facing our world today, problems that my children and grandchildren are going to be left with because of the greed of our generation. I wanted to weep, it seemed like the weight of the world was forcing me under and there was no way up. The storm outside was raging inside my heart and soul.

I did weep, I prayed and through the rain soaked windshield of my car God seemed to speak to me and to show me that just as I could drive only where I was and only where I could see that I could not change all the things that had been mentioned. I could only focus on what was in front of me. God helped me to understand that I am responsible for being the best that I can be, doing His will as I understand it, and not for the whole world. I saw through that wet windshield the blessings that were all around me. My health is reasonable for a man my age, my family belongs to the Lord and my car was warm and working. Not bad for just a moment of remembering. I challenge you to turn off the news and turn on the remembrance of all the blessings you have. Like myself, I challenge you to seek to be God’s best. If we will do that then our world has a chance. Jesus is able and He is ready to repair, to redo, and to redeem all who will come to Him. Remember what Jesus said in Revelations 21:5. “Behold I make all things new.”  Thanks God.

Someone Who Cares

I spent a lot of time in the hospital yesterday and on one of my journeys through the main lobby I stopped and spoke to the ‘Pink Lady’ who has often helped me when I was trying to locate a patient. She mentioned that they had a new magazine in the lobby that had a story about my dad which I had written. She got the magazine and turned to the story and said, wait here just a minute; then she walked over to an older lady sitting with what looked like a young adult grand child. She pointed to the story, then to me and in a few minutes the lady asked if I would join them. I walked over and introduced myself and sit in the chair across from she and her granddaughter. She pointed to the story and told me that she guessed she would be doing a lot of that in the next several days; it was a story about a man coming to pay his respects to my dad in the funeral home at Jackson. I asked what had happened and she said that her husband had just died and they were waiting for their pastor and some family members. They had been in the chapel but she was afraid that it would be hard for them to be found so she and her granddaughter had come out to the main lobby where they could be seen. I expressed my regrets, offered to pray with her, which she seemed pleased that I would then waited until the family begin to gather. I returned to the volunteer and expressed my appreciation for her care and gentile behavior way out of the line of duty and she smiled and said, “It is always good to be someone who cares.” I thought about that as I drove home and wondered how many people she had touched and blessed with her gentle spirit of Christ. Everyone needs someone who cares.  Ivan

In Memory of Mom

I was one of four children, the last born and the only boy. Two of my sister’s Alice and Peggy took care of me a lot in those early days because mother was very sick. I am sorry that those memories are not there; the first memory I have of mother was her standing in the kitchen by the sink looking out the window at our house on Lexington Street. I can still remember the conversation we were having after these seventy years for I had to be three since we moved in December after I turned four in November. I can remember that on that day she was sad because she didn’t think she was as pretty as other people. It may be from her that I received my own inferiority complex. She was crying and because she was crying, I was crying.

I remember many of the stories she told me as a boy, her love for cooking, her always worrying about dad, her children, and grandchildren.  I remember her turned hands as arteries took its revenge. I remember her listing to the radio and the favorite programs she listened to daily and how later she turned to TV and the daily happenings of “As the World Turns.” I remember her humor, her fears, her superstition, how she always talked about never learning to drive, the hundreds of saying she had like, ‘company and fish are alike – they both smell bad after three days. I can remember that she made me promise that we would not bury her in Dyersburg, for some reason she never enjoyed Dyersburg. I remember her going to work during the war but broke her arm and never returned to the working world. I can still hear her telling me that she dreamed I drowned – this was the day before I was to take my swimming test in the Navy. I can still smell the table laden with food for those special events in our home, the living room filled with gifts as we all gathered to open them on Christmas eve, the pile of paper that was left and her being worried about the gifts and if they had been good enough.

I remember how she loved me and each one of us with all of her heart, weeping when trouble came to us, feeding us too much pie and then telling us how much weight we were gaining.

I remember when I was ten kneeling beside her bed and asking God not to let her die, I remember 29 years later holding her in my arms as she left our home on Lindsey Street for her new home in glory.

Thanks Mom, for these simple moments and millions of others, you are still remembered, still loved, and still the prettiest girl in my boyhood life.

Sonny

Mother died on Thursday May 5, 1977 at 246 South Lindsey Street, Jackson, TN

Bad Choices

 

 

Today I am scheduled to do a mock funeral at our high school. They do this from time to time on the day before their prom to help the students understand the possible results of bad choices.  They will have a mock accident in front of the school; there will be first responders, ambulances, fire trucks, and with the weather permitting the air ambulance will fly in and take students out of the wreck scene. The time will end with the student body attending the ‘mock’ funeral of one of their fellow students. I was looking over the funeral announcement and information about the student and admiring how very real it all seemed and how professional it had been prepared. I believe the drama department is in charge of the event.

As I was trying to put together in my head some thoughts to use with the students I remembered a real funeral I held in the gym several years ago. How heart breaking it was to the parents, how the student body wept and grieved, how even now a number of years later the place where the accident happened is marked and still remembered. Not having lost a child I am still certain in my heart that there is no other event which so crushes and consumes a parent.

After I have finished the ‘normal’ remarks of a funeral I plan to hold up the program, compliment them on the excellent job and then say something like there is one thing that is wrong; the picture, name, and information is of a person much too young. It should be my picture, someone of my generation, but unfortunately age is no barrier to bad choices, they do not discriminate, both the young and the old fall victim to wrong choices, even those made by a majority. For even in a democracy the majority is not always right.

Ivan

Another Life

She spent most of her lunch hour looking at items a five year old boy needs and some that he wants.  Her wish list was long but it would be trimmed, in fact 99 percent of it would go unmet. She walked through the store picked out what they would need for supper and walked back to work. She remembered the shock and nightmare of learning at seventeen that she was going to be a mother. The father just laughed and moved into another world, saying that he would give her $500.00 for an abortion but that she must be more careful in the future. He was right; the care she would invoke would be the correct moral code and a wiser choice of ‘friends’ as well as doing the best she could as a single mom. She had finished school, gotten a job, had Marshall and was still working to complete her education and give them both a better life. The job she had provided a one room apartment, food, bus money and care for Marshall while she was at work. It was hard, the dreams of a small town girl were now gone and the hope of those beautiful eyes of seventeen were long lost in the struggle to just stay alive and give Marshall the chance to be all he could be in life. She took him to church but always felt that most of the people consider her beneath them and Marshall as just another welfare kid. There was no welfare involved but the stigma of a never married mother still hung around her neck like a great ‘A’ brazened into her forehead.

David watched her in the store, followed her from a distance as she walked back to work and would be there when she came for Marshall at the Day Care Center. In fact he had watched her for a month now, he even knew what she was thinking, he knew her well, and saw much that he had never known. No mother had ever held him, changed him, dreamed of giving him the things he needed let alone that which he wanted. He had never been a child, never known life as a boy of five. Only now did he live and only now for a brief moment in time would he be here. His mother had let him die before he had seen life, but now, for a moment he would live.

She arrived at work early having dropped Marshall off at school and walking the ten blocks to work. She checked her computer for messages, checked her schedule for the day and began the task of the daily grind.

She heard them speaking in the hall before they knocked and entered her door. “Carla” her boss for the past four years said as he and another man enter the small room, “This is David, he is director of a special project and he and I have been talking for several weeks now and he has a program he wants to talk with you about.” She stood they shook hands and then the man called David asker her to sit and explained that he represented a trust called, “Another Life” and that they were interested in making her an offer. He continued by saying that they were impressed with her life struggles and her desire to achieve and would like for her to become a student in their program. He explained that she would continue with her current job but at half of the hours spent in the office and the other half in school and training. Her salary would be increased a bit and she would be given a two bed room apartment as part of her compensation. The company had agreed that they would share with “Another Life” and once she completed the course she would be promoted to a much more responsible position and salary. David told her that Mr. Swanson would fill in the details and he would check with her again at the end of the program. He turned to leave, them remember and handed her the keys and address of the new home. Check it out; if it is not acceptable just let Mr. Swanson know. With that David was gone.

Mr. Swanson told her to take the rest of the day to check out the apartment, do the paper work at the human resource center of the company, and get things completed for college.

She opened the door to the apartment, it was close enough to walk to her job, had its on front door, porch and short side walk. When she opened it all the furnishing of her dreams were there; Marshall’s room was exactly like the one she had dreamed of in the store and in the closet were several items she had dreamed about for herself as well as for Marshall.

She saw the card on the table and with the tears flowing down her face opened it, inside was a note: Hope this will fill many of your dreams and here is a thousand dollars to help with the odds and ins. Thanks for ‘Another Life’,  David.