True story: Politicizing our Troops.

[patrice]

We've been told that it is bad to politicize things such as 9/11 and the deaths and suffering of our soldiers, so it is with some self-criticism that I write this, because it has to do with the death of a WWII Veteran, my Father, a member of, what I think has come to be somewhat extravagently called, "The Great Generation", an adjective my Father would disavow.

I hope you'll pardon me if I call him Daddy. I'm approaching 60 years old now, so I guess that seems kind of childish, but that is who he always was to me. I miss him and what I called him evokes who he was to me, more than something artificial that I adopt to affect how others perceive me.

I have been thinking about it for eight months now and I have come to realize that, though it IS possible that what I want to say about Daddy has political effects, that is not my motive, and I can keep that from becoming my motive by sticking to the facts. I want to set down the facts somewhere, prefereably somewhere that they might do some good.

Daddy always encouraged us to do what each of us decided was right. We were taught manners, i.e. to take into account what others feel, but not to depend upon others to support our behavior. He and my church said our behavior had to stand on its own merits and demerits and we are to accept the consequences of our choices, right or wrong. So it is that I respond to what criticism I may encounter in my own Family about politicizing Daddy's death. That is not my intention, my intention is the truth about Daddy. If that becomes political, it is others who make it so. It seems to me that it started becoming political a long time ago and that trend culminated in a lie perpetrated through the help of U.S. tax dollars and the American military at Daddy's funeral. A lie, that in terms of the very conservative Catholic faith Daddy raised us within, amounts to sacriilege, sacrilege against our faith and sacrilege against Daddy's life.

[acmejack]

1. This is setting the record straight

Not to be confused politicizing your beloved Daddy's death. I call my Father Daddy too & I am nearly your age, it is a fine old Southern tradition :)

[patrice]

2. Thanks much.

I miss him. He and his family were farm people out of Arkansas by way of Talala, Oklahoma. His sense of justice inspired me.

More about him later. I've gotta go knock on doors now.

Thanks again!