My Favorite Veteran was Beautiful Bride

Ok, I admit that I might be a little biased. 

We both served in the U.S. Navy, and in fact, the Navy is responsible for us meeting in the first place.  We were both stationed in Annapolis Maryland when our paths crossed.  Not at the Naval Academy, we were both enlisted.  We were stationed across the Severn River at the Navy Radio Transmitter Facility NCC9, or in Navy vernacular, NavRadTransFac NCC9, or for us common sailors, NRTF. 

While she was a Flag Writer, an Admirals aid in layman terms, she was not filling that role on our tiny little base.  She worked in San Diego for CINCPAC, commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.  She also worked for the VCNO, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, at the Pentagon.

She loved all of it.  She loved the traditions, the ceremony, the protocols and all the little rules surrounding how things were supposed to be done.  She called that stuff “knife and fork school”.  And anyone who knew Bride probably isn’t surprised to hear that she was good at it.  So good in fact she was the very first E-3 to ever go to flag writer school.  Probably had something to do with being able to type and take shorthand at over 100 words per minute.  

I think part of what she loved was knowing there was a right way to do things.  Where people stood mattered.  How things were presented mattered.  Protocol mattered.  Details mattered.  Not because someone had arbitrarily made up a bunch of rules, although this was the Navy some there was certainly some of that.  Those things mattered because you were representing something larger than yourself. 

Bride got that.

I, of course, occasionally felt obligated to point out one tiny deficiency in her otherwise distinguished naval career.  She was in the Navy and never served on a ship.  As someone who did serve on a ship, two actually, I may have mentioned this once or twice.  Or maybe it was a couple of hundred times.  Bride’s answer was always the same “I wrote a blank check.  The Navy felt my skill set was better suited to the work they assigned me to do.” 

Fair enough.  Looking back, I think there is more packed into that answer than either of us probably realized at the time. 

Everyone who raises their right hand writes some version of that blank check.   You don’t get to know exactly what will be asked of you.  You don’t know where you’ll go, who you’ll leave behind, what you’ll miss, or what the experience will eventually cost you.  Mostly, you just raise your hand and say yes.  For some, that cost is enormous.  For others, service becomes a collection of ordinary sacrifices that people outside the military will never see or understand.

Missed birthdays.  Holidays somewhere other than home.  Friendships interrupted.  Relationships stretched across oceans.  Plans put on hold.  Orders arriving that don’t really give a damn what you had planned for next Tuesday.

I understood some of that when I served.  There is something else I understand much better now.  When young men and women hand their country that blank check, they are placing and extraordinary amount of trust in the people we elect to lead it.  I’m not sure I understood the weight of that when I was the young sailor writing my own check.  I understood orders.  I understood the chain of command.  I understood that when the Navy told me where to go, I went.

What I don’t think I understood was just how far up that chain the responsibility eventually reaches.  We absolutely owe our military members, and their families, leadership worthy of the trust behind that blank check trust.    

That is not a red or blue thing.  It isn’t about one President, one Congress, or one election.  And frankly, I think we cheapen the obligation when we turn it into one.  It is one of the responsibilities that comes with asking other people’s son’s and daughters, husbands and wives, partners, friends and neighbors to put on the uniform and go where they’re sent.

The people who serve have obligations to their country.  That blank check thing.  The country has an even more important obligation to them.     

So today I’ll think about all the veterans I’ve known.  The ones I served beside, some of which I’ll probably call today.  The ones who went places I never had to go.  The ones who came home carrying things the rest of us couldn’t even bear to see.  And all the people who simply went where they were sent and did the job the country asked them to do.  And to all those who carry scars they don’t or can’t talk about.

I’ll be grateful to every damn one of them!  And I’ll probably spend a little extra time thinking about my favorite one.  The squid who never served on a ship.  The flag writer who loved knife and fork school.  The woman who wrote the blank check.  Beautiful Bride.   

Happy Veterans Day Bride.

And to all my Brothers and Sisters from other Mothers, and everyone else who wrote that check.  Thank you for the sacrifices you made.  And thank you for trusting our country with the blank check you wrote.  May we always be worthy of it.