This is a phrase from our pledge of allegiance to our flag. It's something I have recited a little over 6,000 times in my life. Researchers tell us that it takes about 15 repetitions of something to commit it to memory. So 400 times that would seem to commit it to the soul. It is something that I profoundly believe in. It is something profoundly lacking in the current leadership of our nation. So much has been written about this moral abyss, that I don't plan to add anything new or insightful to it. It just saddens me deeply.
Yet being a citizen of this amazing nation does not sadden me in the least. It is an unwarranted fact, based upon the accident of my birth, that I give thanks for every single day. Because though the clouds of jingoism and neo-fascism cast their shadows upon the shining principles that founded this nation, they will not endure the test of time. We are a greater people than our current leadership realizes.
But enough of this...the founding of our nation is a day to remember and celebrate. On the cusp of July 4th, (as nearly 1,800 Americans have given their lives in a dubious conflict that only lies would justify -- okay, one last jab!), I want to remember my uncle Bobby -- Robert Lee by birth. He joined the army while the ink on his high school diploma was still drying, against the will of his mother (my grandmother), so compelling was the cause: to stop the spread of Fascism and the Nazi juggernaut. He trained in Mississippi and was sent to England. On December 24, his ship left the port of Dover on its way to the conflict in Europe. But it never arrived. The USS Leopoldville was torpedoed by a Nazi submarine shortly before 6 PM on Christmas Eve. In letters from the men who survived that horrific experience, his friends testify to Bobby's sacrificial actions. A Staff Sergeant, Bobby removed his life jacket and gave it to another man, and eventually dove into the icy waters of the English Channel in hopes of a miracle...but it was to be his grave.
So, I never knew my uncle Bobby. He died almost 17 years to the day before I was born. Growing up, I heard many stories about his happy-go-lucky personality, his generous nature, his impish side, (something my family has deeply embedded in our genes!) I have a copy of a report he wrote back in 1942 as a Junior in high school. It's titled, “Me, Myself, and I”. It's written in his own hand, and is the only record of his life in the first person that exists. You can imagine how I cherish it. When my grandmother succumbed to the dementia of Alzheimer's she began to refer to me as Bobby, whenever I would visit her in the nursing home. And while this drove my father crazy, I was really happy to be “Bobby” for her. Like Lazarus from the grave, she saw me, and the dead was resurrected. She would tell me things about Bobby in these moments simply by interrogating me as if I was him. He must have been a good man.
So I remember this good man I never knew on this Independence Day. And I trust that his sacrifice, like all of the sacrifice made in the name of this nation, was made in the full hope and faith that the United States would exemplified the credo: “One nation, with liberty and justice for all.”
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