Why I Cry On Memorial Day

My father served honorably in the United States Air Force for almost 20 years until diabetes struck him down.

He was at Normandy and later went on to fly B-17s because he was already a pilot and got transferred to the Army Air Corps. I grew up around military men and women and never quite understood why civilians distrusted us so.

We were the first military family to move to Jacksonville, Ark. when the brand new Little Rock Air Force Base was established. I was in the 10th grade and had spent my life among whites, blacks, browns and yellows and never thought a thing about it.

Then, I got to Arkansas and found out about “colored only” water fountains, “no niggers allowed” signs in windows and the very real possibility of being lynched for looking at a white woman. I was aghast.

This is what my father fought for? Also, I was very naive when it came to the opposite sex because Air Force families were conservative, strict and everyone had to be home by eight. Yet the entire community treated our family as white trash who would disrupt the morals of their children.

These same children who taught me everything I ever learned about sex, brutality, bigotry and man’s inhumanity to man. In the summers, I worked in a drug store and blacks weren’t allowed in so I had to drive the pickup out to their ramshackle residences to deliver their prescriptions.

When I said, “Thank you, m’am,” they just stared in amazement. No white boy had ever, in their entire life, been polite to them.

Later on, I went to a state teacher’s college that was so segregated a young woman who got an exceptionally good tan was told to go home until it wore off. I stood two years of it and joined the Navy to get away from that hateful place. On the bus to boot camp, I saw three rednecks in a pickup truck screaming the most hateful, foul words at a small boy and girl, probably four and six, because they were black.

The bus driver refused to stop so some of us recruits could go beat the crap out of those redneck bastards. After the controlled chaos of boot camp and a six month school I still can’t talk about, I got sent overseas.

I made it a point to be outside when they raised the colors in the morning so I could proudly salute the flag because I knew America (then, anyway) wasn’t what I experienced in Arkansas. It was the brave and heroic men and women I served with on subs, in planes, in the jungles.

It was the men and women of the United States Air Force I had grown up with, people of all colors dedicated to their country and their fellow man.

When they played Taps at night, I was there, my heart full and my mind joyful to see that beloved red, white and blue piece of cloth that, to me, stood for the heroes of World War I, World War II, Korea and, at that time, Vietnam. As always, a tear formed when they lowered the flag and that mournful tune played.

Even now, when they play the national anthem before football games or car races on TV, I stand up and salute. When I saw our president bow to a desert “king,” my outrage knew no bounds. Then he “apologized” for our “arrogance.”

The arrogance that saved Europe from the Nazis and the east from the Japanese war machine, at a terrible cost in lives. More recently, the arrogance that sent dozens of ships to Haiti after the earthquake, to Indonesia - which is 90% Muslim - when they were hit by a Tsunami and spent millions to help them rebuild.

These same Muslims who want anyone who disagrees with them killed.

Worse yet, I fear for this country and its headlong rush into multiculturalism, diversity and political correctness.

This is not the America I knew, where everyone spoke English, tipped their hats to ladies, rarely uttered a profanity and drugs were unheard of. Men wore suits, women wore dresses and occasionally gloves.

Then a few days ago, driving home, I happened to get caught at a red light in front of a charter school just as the teenagers were getting out. I would estimate 95% were Latino and 100% were dressed as if they were on their way to a homeless convention.

No one’s hair was combed (unless you count the Mohawk haircuts), their jeans were ragged and torn, none of the girls wore make up that I could see but they did have on short shorts my mother would have never allowed. The boys all were in baggy jeans and ripped shirts, usually with rude sayings inscribed on them.

I was embarrassed for my country and what it has become. Then I thought of the heroic men and women who volunteered to go to war and defend America in the deserts of the mid-East. I thought of the officers and men I met recently on a U.S. Navy ship - clean cut, polite and exceptionally proficient.

What’s my point? If we don’t do something now, if we don’t return America to what it was - no dialing one for English, for example - if we don’t keep the illegal riffraff out of this country, of all races and ethnic groups, it’s doomed. If it isn’t already.

Jeremiah Wainwright