Although all of that is important, it pales in insignificance to the story I want to tell you today. Although I have lost quite a bit of weight in the last year, and my daughter calls me " The New Travel-size Dad," folding into an airplane seat is not something I do easily. I never look forward to the experience and I have a tendency to just shut down once I am in an airplane, hoping it will be over soon. That was certainly the approach I took on the way out, all 275+ pounds of me in a center seat. That was the approach I had intended to use on the way back. I was seated in seat 37A, a window seat in the last row of the plane. What I got to witness there was truly inspirational. After we were all boarded, but before the doors closed, one of the flight attendants came back to our part of the plane. She approached a young man who was sitting two rows ahead of me and told him there was a person in First Class who wanted to give him their seat. The young man was a soldier, and the person up front wanted to do something special for him. Although very gracious, the young man declined. It was just a moment in time passing before me, but one that brought tears to my eyes.
The rest of the flight passed quite differently than I originally expected. I was overwhelmed with a flood of thoughts and emotions. My first thoughts were about the fact that I had been in the last group that not only had draft cards but that also had draft numbers. For those of you too young to know, these numbers told you what order you would be called to service in any given year. They were 1-365 and pulled once a year, then the Selective Service would start notifying people based on the number. People with the birth date picked as number one would go first, then number two and so on. In the years of the Viet Nam conflict they generally got about half way through the year. The year that I would have been eligible for the draft, I was number eight. I would have gone, but that was the year they stopped the draft.
Those thoughts drew up memories of those years when young men returned from military service and were defamed and spit on for their part in a war nobody believed in. But they had been called to serve and die for their country. I am thankful that military service has come to be a good career path for many and I am glad neither of my children was forced to serve.
There are other members of my extended family who have serve. I am proud of each of them, and I realize that I've probably never told any of them. On that flight, I thought about Veteran's Day and the older people who served and are honored on that singular day of the year. All of these thoughts poured into my mind during that flight, triggered by the generosity and of someone in first class and the grace of a young soldier in coach.
So I came home from Vegas, not thinking at all about the show, or business, or any of the things that had been so important just a few hours before. I came home thinking of the men and women who are willing to put on the uniform of our country and stand in harm's way to protect each of us and the liberties we sometimes take for granted.
Wow, all of this from a plane ride. If that were not enough, when I got off the plane, at the bottom of the escalator was the young man's entire family, signs in hand and tears in their eyes because he had come home to them.
This weekend, remember our military and what they do for each of us, and if there are military members in your family, tell them thanks. Have a great weekend.
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