“Go Goose, Go!”

In our church, we seldom say, “Amen.” It’s a cultural thing. We may agree and even be moved by something the minister says, to which we may silently nod our head in agreement. It’s just not us to shout out an “Amen!” and thus call attention to ourselves. When someone does, we fight the urge to look around to see if we have a visitor in service. We are like the story Mark Twain told of giving a talk in New Hampshire and no one was laughing at his stories like they did in other places. After thirty minutes or so with no one laughing, he wondered what had gone wrong. After the talk, a man came up to him and said, “Mr. Twain, that was one of the funniest talks I ever heard. There were times I could barely keep from laughing!”

There is a time in our service when small children are invited to the front of the sanctuary where they are told a little story. It can be a Bible story, a morality tale, a review of something they have done of which we are proud or even a reminder of some upcoming event in which they will be involved. On a particular Sunday, Venita, the children’s choir director, was doing the Children’s Sermon. She was up front and had the small children sitting in the floor around her. She reminded them of seeing geese flying south in a V-formation for the winter and then fly back north in another V-formation for the summer months. Yes, they responded, they had all seen it.

“The reason they fly in that V-formation is because the goose in front has the hardest job,” said Venita. “He has to cut through the air and then that makes it easier for the others to follow him. They put the strongest goose in the lead because he has the hardest job. He goes until he gets tired and then he falls back to the end and another goose takes his place. They keep doing this all day long while flying, keeping the strongest goose in the lead.”

She then turned to the subject of the honking. “And,” she said, “have you ever heard them honking as they fly along?” Yes, they responded, they had all heard that honking. “Do you know what they are doing with all that honking?” No, they had no idea. “That’s the way they encourage the lead goose to keep going, keep cutting into the air for the flock to fly through. It’s like they are saying, ‘You go, goose, you go!’ Without that encouragement the lead goose might not be able to keep going.”

It was interesting. I had learned something in that “Children’s Sermon” I didn’t know. I was glad I was there. Later, the preacher, Dick House, was delivering the regular sermon and I was still reflecting on that goose which was being encouraged to cut through the air so the flock could fly south.

A few years back, our state voted for a state lottery, and once that was passed, it opened the flood gates for Indian Tribes to open casinos throughout the state. Overnight, a state which would have frowned on flipping for coins became overrun with casinos. While these provide employment, good employment, for many people and contribute positively to the economy of the Tribes, it also has created an atmosphere that for the first time requires public service announcements on where to get help for gambling addiction!

On that Sunday, Dick was preaching and during his sermon he mentioned this problem. I don’t know if he was planning it, but he reflectively noted that this was a problem and this was why he had personally worked on defeating the lottery initiative in the first place. “Sometimes,” he said, “you feel like you’re working all alone against insurmountable odds on things like this.”

There was a pause. He may have planned it as a pregnant pause, a time in which we could reflect on what he was trying to get across. It was one of those moments I should have probably said “Amen.” But, I was still moved by that story Venita told and I shouted, “You go, goose!”

Perhaps I shouldn't have done that.

The "Soul" of America

In a recent production about the American South, that region’s culture is celebrated. It has contributed to the music, cuisine, sports and many other elements of our American culture. Interviews with people of the South finally concluded with the assertion that “the South is the soul” of America.

The South has always been a curious and interesting place. It has made contributions of significance, in the above noted fields as well as literature, science, philosophy and religion, and, yet, it has been only in recent years that light has been shown in what was for a long time a dark and mysterious place. It has been exposed to the light of day because of better travel after World War II and better communications. It has also been opened up to the world, thanks to air conditioning and, not a small matter, collegiate football and television. It has sights, tastes, sounds and smells which delight our senses.

Of interest to me was that the entire program never talked about the Antebellum South. It’s as if that part of their history never existed. Normally, when travelling through the area, that’s one of the things we like to see, the Old South and its aristocracy. What the program presented was more the other side of the South, the poor to middle class, children of people who worked hard to eke out a life and living in a hard place in a hard time.

They spoke about the damage done to the psyche of the South when they lost the Civil War. Entire towns were burned, one-fourth of the southern men of fighting age were lost. There were other horrendous casualties of the war. (Nor did they dwell on the failed Reconstruction policies following the war.) At no time, however, did anyone ever suggest that perhaps their political leaders, those of the Antebellum Aristocracy, should not have picked that fight.

Another deafening silence in the program was the failure to mention hardly at all the very significant number of African-Americans in the South. There was a famous Black football player interviewed, as well as a college professor, the mention of the Blues music scene in Memphis and the obligatory Black choir singing spirituals. The only mention of slavery was in the context of a slave who took his master’s steamship and delivered it to the Union Navy. He was commended as a hero by Abraham Lincoln and after the war he returned to his home in South Carolina where he bought his former master’s home and was elected to Congress. There were a lot of Blacks in the South who did not get to walk the halls of Congress.

I love the South. I never considered my state to be part of the South; it was more a part of the Southwest. But, my roots run deep in the Confederacy. When we celebrate it, or any region of our great country, we should discuss it, warts and all.

Under the Bus

My son is an African-American child we adopted as a new-born. Born in 1995, he was part of that generation which saw a large number of babies born which we called “bi-racial.” I will always be of the opinion that this influx of babies born in those days probably will do a lot to improve race relations in America as many, if not most, of them had grandparents who dote on them, regardless of race. Shortly after his adoption, I ran across against a man I knew who couldn’t wait to tell me his personal experience. He told me he had one of “those” too, his daughter had “taken up with a black kid and came up pregnant.” She and the baby were living at home with his wife and him and as he spoke about the little baby I could tell he was the light of his life. I knew this man and knew he was a redneck racist, but this little baby was melting his old rotten redneck, racist heart. He was a better man because of his little grandson.

There are many people who believe a child with any degree of African-American bloodlines whatsoever should be raised in a black family. Their argument, simplified considerably and perhaps unfairly, is that only a black family is socially prepared to raise these children and that if they are raised by white parents, or, I suppose, by mixed parents, they will be confused and this will be detrimental to their well-being. This argument was first proposed years ago by a group of African-American social workers; however, it has been discredited in more recent years. The new idea is that the child will benefit from having two loving parents dedicated to providing a wholesome environment for the child or children regardless of their racial differences.

Here is my observation: We may call a child of mixed blood whatever we want, but if there is a single drop of known African-American blood in him or her, they will think of themselves, and society will think of them, as African-Americans. That may not be reasonable, but it’s reality. The African-American social workers would say, “See, we told you so.” But, I come from a completely different background and look at things completely differently than they do. I see this attitude as a hold-over from the slave days in the Old South and the Jim Crow era. In those times, people were considered to be Black even if they had a single drop traceable to an African lineage, thus making them subject to slavery during the days slavery was allowed in America and susceptible to discrimination while the Jim Crow laws were the law of the land. I personally like the designation, “Bi-racial”, but I have lost that battle for now. I’m hoping I have not lost the war.

My son, when he was very small, had no idea what it was to be Black. In day care, there was a mixture of kids, giving it the look one would expect to see in a day care at the United Nations. There were Blacks, Indians, Indians from South America, Chinese, Hispanics, Bi-racial and God knows what else. There were even a couple of White kids there as well. None of those kids had any idea what “race” was, nor did they think they should act any differently toward anyone. That observation and that reaction took a while for the kids to learn from their parents and did not manifest itself until about the third or fourth grade in elementary school. I watched my son go from having no idea that he might be any different from anyone else, to slowly becoming aware. He didn’t understand what it was, nor did he understand what it was to be “Black”, he just knew that whatever Michael Jordan was, he was. He was the only child of African-American descent in the family, and we didn’t have that many friends of this bloodline. We did not intentionally expose him to a Black culture as this would have been foreign to us and would have come across as artificial. So, he had some difficulty in deciding who he was. We did not try to hide it from him, nor did we try to shield him from the experience. We openly spoke of him as a bi-racial child, and assumed this would be his identity as he got older. However, it soon became apparent that he was going to identify himself as an African-American child; he never did accept that he was bi-racial.

He was in about the fifth grade in elementary school when he was becoming more aware. His friends in school didn’t treat him any differently because of his race and I felt I saw positive signs for our nation in that young generation. As he’s grown up, I’ve become more and more impressed with the tolerance of younger people. I believe my generation has been better than that of my parents and now, it seems to me, my children and grandchildren are better than mine. They do not have the suspicions or the fear of people not like themselves that characterized earlier times, and that may be, in part, caused by the presence of so many bi-racial children his age.

Still, he considered himself “Black”, as did his classmates, even though he had more “White” in him than “Black” and a not insignificant amount of American Indian. I’m not sure he thinks all that much about it, nor am I sure his friends and classmates think all that much about it. This is as it should be, but I’m not sure if the reaction would be the same if he had darker skin.

He was in the fifth grade when I decided to take him to lunch with me. We were driving to Oklahoma City where I intended to take him to a place called Family Affair. While driving, I told him this was unlike any other restaurant he had ever been to. I explained that it was in an area of town which was predominantly, if not exclusively, populated by African-Americans. I told him it was owned and operated by some Black women and most of the patrons would probably be African-American. After I had told him this, he simply asked if I had been there before. I assured him that I had, in fact, been there several times. That was all he asked, he seemed satisfied.

When we drove into the community where the restaurant was located, he didn’t notice that everyone on the street was Black. He didn’t notice the bars on the windows and on the door which were placed there to prevent break-ins, even though we didn’t have such security measures on our windows and doors at home, nor had he ever, so far as I knew, ever seen such a thing. We walked into the restaurant and to his surprise, and mine, the place was nearly full of diners. It was busier than I had ever seen it. And, every person in there, patrons, wait staff, cooks, everyone was Black. He grabbed my leg in a bear hug, holding as tight as he could, so tight it would have been impossible to slip a cigarette paper between us.

I was painfully aware that he had no experience at all in being around African-Americans and he was frightened. Was it unreasonable? Yes. Was it understandable? Yes. Did it say anything bad about him? No. It probably was a greater testimony on me than it was on him and the reader can pass judgment as he or she sees fit. I won’t argue the point. I was reminded of a lawyer I once worked with. She was raised in a military family and she had travelled the world, always living in base housing. She was always a small minority, racially speaking, wherever she lived. In 1973, she came to the school where I was teaching, a school which had a large number of African-Americans. Her father had retired and he brought his family to this, his home town, to live. She told me later, after we were both lawyers, that when she moved to that little town she was terrified. She had never lived around so many Blacks and she brought with her her own stereotypes and prejudices, together with her discomforts and fears. My son was seeing in this restaurant more Blacks in a single setting than he would see in a year’s time. More importantly, he and I were clearly the minority and all the talking I had done beforehand had not prepared him for this experience.

There was an empty table next to us and another across the room. I pointed them out and asked him where he would like to sit. “This one,” he replied, selecting the table nearest us. We sat down and he looked around the room. It seemed all eyes were on us and then he leaned closer to me. In a stage whisper I am sure most everyone heard, he said from the corner of his mouth, “Dad! Dad! Everyone in here’s Black but you!”

The Night We Got Bin Laden

The civilized world celebrated when President Barack Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. And, it continued to rejoice as we learned more of the details of that night. The Navy Seals, Seal Team 6, or some such name, got all the notoriety. They are supposed to do things in secret, drink a little Jack Daniel and enjoy a quiet celebration among themselves, and then go off to their next rendezvous which may or may not be a meeting with destiny. No one should ever know.

That’s not the way it happened this time. It really doesn’t bother me that the Seals broke a cardinal rule of engagement by allowing their existence and involvement to be made public. What bothers me is that if they are not going to hold the Seals to their code of secrecy, my friend and I shouldn’t be forced to be silent either. So, I am going to tell you the story of our involvement even if it is against orders. What are they going to do, shoot me? Perhaps it isn’t discreet to ask it just like that. They may. I’ll just have to risk it.

It started back when my friend Jerry and I learned about the Navy Seals. We both had a little extra time on our hands, having retired a few years earlier. We were just a little tired of the fact that the man who admitted to his involvement in the 9/11 attack was still running around free. We had a few ideas on how we could take him out. It involved the two of us and a rusty pocket knife. The plan also called for our friend David carrying the knife in his Depends for a couple of weeks prior to our leaving on our mission, but that part’s classified as it comes under the heading of “bacterial warfare.”

We first went to an Army recruiter and volunteered to sign up. “You want to join the Army?” he asked.

“Hell, no,” I replied. “We want to sign up for Special Forces, Delta Force preferably.”

At first, they laughed. But, when they saw we were serious they explained that they were full up with Delta Forces types. As we were leaving, one of them suggested we visit the Navy recruiter, he thought they might be taking applications for the Navy Seals. We thanked him and agreed that we should check it out. “In fact,” he said, “I hear they’re putting together a special group of Navy Seals to go after Bin Laden. You know, they can’t find him in Afghanistan because they think he’s hiding out down in the Tahiti Islands. It’s just the mission for a group of Navy boys.”

“Really,” said Jerry. “Hersh,” he said, turning to me, “that makes a lot of sense. He can’t be hiding in Afghanistan, or even Pakistan for that matter. These Army boys would’ve found him by now if he was there. They haven’t found him, it just stands to reason that he’s not there.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s brilliant. He’s hiding in plain sight right there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

As we were walking out the door to go see the Navy man, the recruiter told us not to tell them we heard about the plan from him. He explained that it was highly classified. He also told us not to take “no” for an answer. He told us to tell the Navy we were “By God Republicans” and that we were close friends with John McCain. “And, don’t just walk in and say, ‘Hey, I’m a Republican.’ No, sir, you guys just march right in there and say, ‘Hey, I’m a By God Republican!’”

We thanked him for that and left to see the Navy man.

At the Navy recruiting office, we thought seriously about seeking a different assignment other than killing Bin Laden. We thought seriously of joining the N.C.I.S. Neither of us ever knew about the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) until we began watching a show about it on television. We didn’t think we would be too old for that since we had seen Mark Harman in that show. Hell, we couldn’t be a lot older than he was. And, that little girl from Israel on the show was clearly a bonus. Sharp, good looking, and she could help me fight my way out of any bar or football game against Louisiana State University. But, when we presented the idea to the recruiter he told us the NCIS was full up. I was getting a little curious about that situation. I thought there was a shortage of people volunteering for service and here Jerry and I had run into “full up” twice in one morning.

Going back to our first plan, I said, “We’re here to join the Navy Seals.”

“The Navy Seals?” he replied.

“Yep.”

“Aren’t you guys a little old to want to be Navy Seals?”

“Is there an age limit to wanting to serve our country, sailor?” I asked.

“Well, I guess not. But, but…”

“Don’t tell me they’re full up,” I interrupted. “Because I’m getting a little tired of hearing that.”

“Oh, no, no, I wasn’t going to say that. It’s just that…”

I could see he was trying to be evasive. “Did I mention that I’m a Republican?”

“You’re a Republican?”

“Hell no,” I answered, “I’m a By God Republican!”

“A By God Republican?”

“That’s right,” I said, “and not only that, we know John McCain.”

I had him with that one. He looked around the room to make sure no one was listening. Then, in a low voice, something like a whisper, he said, “Look guys, you seem to have a good sense of what we need. I would have some difficulty placing you with the Seals. You men have too much to offer for those guys, but, we have a special category of service just for you. Instead of the Seals, I would suggest you be placed with the Navy Walruses.”

“Navy Walruses?”

“Right, the Walruses. It’s kind of an auxiliary unit for the Seals. You back them up. Those guys sometimes get into some things they shouldn’t because they don’t know how to back up and evaluate a situation before rushing in. They’re young and they sometimes rush in where angels fear to tread, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I think I know,” said Jerry.

“We make special use of your talents, especially your wisdom which comes only from living a good long life and we call you when needed.”

“Sounds good,” said Jerry. “What’s the training like?”

“That’s the beauty of the program,” he replied, “you train at home on your own. Just go home and train and wait for us to call.”

We shook on it and Jerry and I went home. Jerry had a set of tapes of Richard Simmons and another of Jack LaLanne we watched and worked out with. They proved a little strenuous, so I broke out my old Jane Fonda tapes which we were satisfied to simply watch. We continued following this training regimen for a week or so, but we slowly lost interest when the minutes rolled into hours, the hours into days and the days into a week. We tapered off on our training, but felt we were as ready as anyone should the Navy call.

It was a couple of years before we got that call. Jerry was the one who got it. The voice on the phone began with, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” and Jerry assumed this was some kind of code talk. He wasn’t certain how to respond, so he simply said, “Nor can I.”

“Listen,” the voice said, “our records show you guys were helicopter pilots in Nam.”

“Yes,” Jerry replied.

“Well, listen, we’ve found ourselves in some kind of a bind. Can you guys still fly?”

“Heck, yeah,” Jerry told him. “It’s like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how you never forget.”

“Alright, we’ve planned a mission that has to go off tomorrow night. Get your buddy and go to Tinker Air Base. Transportation will be waiting for you and you’ll be briefed on route here.”

He immediately came and got me, explaining what he knew which wasn’t very much. But, our country needed us so we were off. While being flown to our rendezvous with the other team members, we were told what was going to happen. We were informed that Bin Laden was hiding in plain sight in Pakistan and that they were sending a mission of Seals in to get him. They were going to use two helicopters to send in the team, get him and then get out. It was a well-planned mission, but one of the crews, the pilot and co-pilot, of one of the helicopters got food poisoning at a local restaurant and their recovery would take too long for them to participate in the raid. There weren’t any other teams available on such notice and that was why we got the call.

I took Jerry aside and asked him if they had inquired into whether we still flew helicopters. He said they hadn’t asked that, they simply asked whether we could still fly. He had assured them we still could. “Don’t you remember how?” he asked me. I replied that I thought I did. “Sure you do,” he said, “you never forget a thing like that. To say otherwise would bring into question our military training and that’s, By God, un-American.” I agreed to that line of reasoning and we both reasserted our commitment to be By God Americans. So we returned to the briefing.

Ours was the second helicopter that flew into Bin Laden’s compound on that fateful night. Ours was the one which crashed on landing, but it wasn’t really our fault. It was late at night and we had been flying for some time. We’re old and with age comes not only wisdom but problems as well. I had excused myself to go back to the head. I had no idea that as I was taking a leak Jerry was taking a nap. He dozed off just as we were nearing the landing zone. Jerry woke up just as the wind shear from the other chopper caused us to lose lift and we crashed in the back yard of our target.

The Seals came running to us, in whispered shouts they asked us how we were. We were all safe, but that wasn’t good enough for them. “I don’t know why they let you old walruses come along on this mission,” the mission leader said. I started explaining that they needed pilots and that they called us on short notice. I tried to explain the wind shear caused by the first chopper in the enclosed compound walls, but I didn’t mention mine and Jerry’s peculiarities just before the crash. He cut me off and called over a Seal named Mike, giving him orders to stay near and take care of us. It was a little condescending.

We all approached the building closest to the landing and immediately met resistance. There were several people out there shooting at us and we were shooting back. Everyone was shooting except Jerry and me, we didn’t have any guns. I crawled over to commander of our group and asked for our guns. He replied that they forgot to bring them and ordered me to get back over with Jerry and Mike. Then he yelled over to Mike to take “those old geezers into that building and keep them out of the line of fire. If I’ve gotta lose someone I’d rather it be them, but let’s try not to lose anyone at all.”

Mike took us into the building and closed the door behind us. All of those Seals looked alike. They were tall and muscular and they cut their hair off leaving a look similar to Mr. Clean. On the other hand, Jerry looked a lot like Stan Laurel and I looked a lot like Oliver Hardy. It rather amazed even me that we were on the same team.

As I was making these observations, I suddenly realized sending us into this building was a stroke of genius. It became evident that this building was the heart and soul of the Bin Laden operation. Four men and a young teenage girl, about thirteen years old, came charging us. They were unarmed, but they were screaming like a banshee as they rushed toward us. Mike told us to take out the little girl while he dealt with the others. Mike crammed the heel of his open palm into the first one’s nose and we saw him fall down in a heap. He grabbed another in a headlock and while holding him in a deadly lock he swung him around, knocking another one to the floor. He then drove his hand in a chopping motion into another’s throat, rendering him unconscious, and then knocked the one in the headlock out with a single blow to the face. The other man, the one he had knocked down to the floor using the one he held in a headlock, had gotten up off the floor and was staggering toward Mike.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “we trained for just this type of encounter. We trained on monkey bars.”

“Yeah,” replied Mike, “I’m sure training that intense would’ve washed out a lot of us Seals.” He then reached over and pinched the guy’s nerve at the base of his neck, something like a Vulcan Nerve Pinch Mr. Spock would have put on someone.

In the meantime, Jerry and I were trying to take out the little girl. Don’t ever underestimate how tough one of those little girls can be. She was scratching and biting and clawing, kicking and kneeing, while all the time screaming at us in some language we couldn’t understand. We were trying to be gentle with her at first, both of us having a daughter. It just wasn’t in us to hit a girl, but she sure had no reservations about hitting an old man. She knocked Jerry down and he rolled across the floor, nearly upending Mike as he was trying to get the four men under control. I grabbed her while her back was turned and threw her to the floor, actually falling down with her where I luckily fell on her and was able to use my superior weight to hold her down.

Jerry got up off the floor and rejoined the fight. I was trying, without success, to put a spinning toe hold on her and Jerry was slapping her with his open hand when Mike came over to assist us. “Good God Almighty,” he said as he reached down and put the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on her, thus putting her into a deep sleep for about the next forty-five minutes. Jerry started jumping around like a monkey, looking for someone else to slap. I slowly got up off the floor with Mike’s help, bending over to catch my breath. “You two fighting warriors come with me,” said Mike.

We went outside and found that the rest of the crew had pretty well wrapped up their assignments. They were gathering Bin Laden into the chopper, together with a treasure trove of papers which would later prove helpful in our country’s fight against terror. We were going to load up to leave when the commander came over to the three of us. “Mike,” he said, “what with losing a chopper and with all this stuff, we’re going have to let you guys walk out.”

“Skipper, you don’t have room for the three of us?” asked Mike.

“No. We have room for just one more.”

“Well?”

“Now, Mike, I can’t leave these old walruses here by themselves and the two of you work so well together. You can walk them out of here, but I’m afraid they’d never find the way by themselves. You can do this, Mike. Remember, we can’t leave anyone behind.”

“Skipper,” said Mike, “I apologized already, and I didn’t know she was your sister.”

The commander smiled as he loaded up in the chopper and they flew off into the night. Mike, Jerry and I walked out, a little jaunt that took nearly a week to cover the thirty miles or so to a friendly base.

I have probably violated several secrecy laws by telling this story. I will probably lose my security clearance, but this story needs to be told. When the President announced we got Bin Laden, everyone was elated. I listened to everything he said and every report on the incident and in all that euphoria there was absolutely nothing said about the contribution of the Navy Walruses.