Let's Talk About Real Courage

By Daniel Darling - Posted at One Little Word:

What the people who gave their lives for freedom might teach us

When I was around ten or eleven, my family packed up our silver Chevy station wagon and headed East from the Chicago suburbs where we lived and toward the nation’s capital. My mom had been planning this trip to D.C. for months and months. This was before the age of the Internet, she had to do it the old-fashioned way, looking through brochures and making phone calls to hotels in the Beltway. We were on a fixed budget and our vacations were tied to the success of my father’s plumbing business. So we stayed a few miles away from the National Mall and used public transportation to get around, again, relying on paper maps, without smartphones and apps. This trip was transformative for me.

I still have vivid memories, over three-and-a-half decades later, but among them is my sense of awe and wonder at the Lincoln Memorial, still the best square footage in all of America. (If you visit DC, go at night and it’s nearly a spiritual experience). I remember waking up before the sun another day and getting in line to visit the White House, hoping to catch a glimpse of President George HW Bush. In those pre-9/11 days, the tours were less restrictive. We visited much of the White House, even peering up into the family quarters, though that part was heavily restricted.

But perhaps the memory I have not forgotten is the day we spent at Arlington Cemetery. Rows and rows of graves line this sacred spot of land a few miles outside D.C. My father made sure we were on time for the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. If you are not familiar, this is a grave that honors those who died but have never been identified. This was an emotional day there as my parents explained to me and my siblings the price paid by those buried in. They gave their lives up for freedom.

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