My Heart on the Line
By Frank
Schaeffer
The Washington Post
Before my son became a Marine, I never
thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism
or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a
member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very
carefully. Sometimes I cry.
In 1999, when the barrel-chested Marine
recruiter showed up in dress blues and bedazzled my son John, I did not stand in
the way. John was headstrong, and he seemed to understand these stern, clean men
with straight backs and flawless uniforms. I did not. I live in the
Volvo-driving, higher education-worshiping North Shore of Boston. I write novels
for a living. I have never served in the military.
It had been hard enough sending my two
older children off to Georgetown and New York University. John's enlisting was
unexpected, so deeply unsettling. I did not relish the prospect of answering the
question, "So where is John going to college?" from the parents who were itching
to tell me all about how their son or daughter was going to Harvard. At the
private high school John attended, no other students were going into the
military.
"But aren't the Marines terribly
Southern?" asked one perplexed mother while standing next to me at the brunch
following graduation. "What a waste, he was such a good student," said another
parent. One parent (a professor at a nearby and rather famous university) spoke
up at a school meeting and suggested that the school should "carefully evaluate
what went wrong."
When John graduated from three months of
boot camp on Parris Island, 3,000 parents and friends were on the parade deck
stands. We parents and our Marines not only were of many races but also were
representative of many economic classes. Many were poor. Some arrived crammed in
the backs of pickups, others by bus. John told me that a lot of parents could
not afford the trip.
We in the audience were white and Native
American. We were Hispanic, Arab, and African American, and Asian. We were
former Marines wearing the scars of battle, or at least baseball caps emblazoned
with battles' names. We were Southern whites from Nashville and skinheads from
New Jersey, black kids from Cleveland wearing ghetto rags and white ex-cons with
ham-hock forearms defaced by jailhouse tattoos. We would not have been mistaken
for the educated and well-heeled parents gathered on the lawns of John's private
school a half-year before.
After graduation one new Marine told
John, "Before I was a Marine, if I had ever seen you on my block I would've
probably killed you just because you were standing there." This was a serious
statement from one of John's good friends, a black ex-gang member from Detroit
who, as John said, "would die for me now, just like I'd die for
him."
My son has connected me to my country in
a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before. I feel closer to
the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends. She has two
sons in the Corps. They are facing the same dangers as my boy. When the guy who
fixes my car asks me how John is doing, I know he means it. His younger brother
is in the Navy.
Why were I and the other parents at my
son's private school so surprised by his choice? During World War II, the sons
and daughters of the most powerful and educated families did their bit. If the
idea of the immorality of the Vietnam War was the only reason those lucky enough
to go to college dodged the draft, why did we not encourage our children to
volunteer for military
service once that war was done?
Have we wealthy and educated Americans
all become pacifists? Is the world a safe place? Or have we just gotten used to
having somebody else defend us? What is the future of our democracy when the
sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely
to be put in harm's way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents
clean?
I feel shame because it took my son's
joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me. I feel
hope because perhaps my son is part of a future "greatest generation." As the
storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in
uniform in the eye. My son is one of them. He is the best I have to offer. He is
my heart.
