Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
Mohandas K Gandhi
Today has certainly been quite the tempest round here with 45 knot winds round daybreak and a steady 30 knots through the day before dying down toward the evening to make the chilly temperatures even more unpleasant.
These were the conditions that greeted me as I ran a couple of errands to get the usual ham from Honeybaked Ham and some final items from Wegman’s.
Then there was the welcome distraction of serving Mom’s needs by trying to replace some of her identification that was lost when her wallet was nicked by some nasty Grinch who deserves whatever karma decides to mete out for them.
Let’s not forget this evening’s fun of watching the Carolina Hurricanes stake themselves to a 6-2 lead after two periods to darned near blow that lead against the woeful Philadelphia Flyers and escape with a 6-5 win to set a new consecutive points record at 14 games in a row.
But no matter what distraction these things might have brought, there was always in the back of my mind that we’re now seven years after my father’s passing.
Trying to find the theme for this post wasn’t necessarily easy but then it came to me as revelations often do: suddenly and with no warning but such a profound effect when it came upon me.
One clear thread throughout my father’s life was service.
Service to his country during a long career in the Army was certainly what he was most known for but it wasn’t originally his life’s ambition. As we were talking about what we imagined my future may eventually look like at his dining table just after he finally arrived in Port Orange for good, he got to talking about what he had dreamed about his life’s path when he was my age.
He had aspirations of eventually becoming a doctor but life has a way of finding different plans for you and putting you where the universe feels you ought to be.
He found himself graduating from the University of Illinois, getting married and his commission, and then he was off to his first tour in Vietnam in the Army’s Medical Corps. And whilst he’d command a MASH unit and be a hospital administrator, that dream of being a doctor in private practice never came to be.
But in so doing, he become something even greater by serving his country and serving it well for what would ultimately end up being a 24-year career.
However, in all the time I was with him in his various postings until he retired, I always had the sense that whilst he was proud to serve the needs of others in the Army, the day-to-day business of being a military officer wasn’t what truly brought him joy.
There would be times where he’d seem to have a bit of happiness and he could briefly leave the burdens of command to one side.
Often these were when we could share adventures together whether it was watching him contending with the most ornery riding horse to ever grace Brackenridge Park (San Antonio TX) or being a co-conspirator in getting my grandmother to ride with us on a looping roller coaster called the Zambezi Zinger at Worlds of Fun near Kansas City MO.
To this day, I’m shocked that we got away with that one but we’d have a laugh remembering her seeing the “Chicken Exit” and still getting her into the roller coaster car and doing these horizontal loops until we got to the top of the first drop where she made some kind of strange and strangled noises before letting loose with some of the most colourful Magyar phrases that I’d ever heard for the rest of the ride. She wasn’t a real happy bunny when we got off that ride and we endured about three weeks of very clipped conversation but she eventually did forgive us. Mostly. But she never forgot that little incident and I’m pretty sure she didn’t really trust us fully ever again… 🙂
True joy, on the other hand, was rare at best.
He’d certainly do his level-best to try to hide it from those of us who loved and cared for him but you don’t live with someone for years without getting to understand them at an emotional level they may well not appreciate by themselves.
You’ve got to understand that he was the poster child for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) well before it become as widely understood and appreciated as it is today. Some of the things he saw and experienced during his two tours in Vietnam I would not wish upon my worst enemy and the many nights I’d sit outside his bedroom door hearing him yelling and thrashing about as some nightmare had taken hold of him taught me more about the horrors of war than I’d ever personally know.
If that wasn’t bad enough, being a single parent in the military (and an officer, no less!) is probably the hardest MOS known to our armed services.
So it’s no wonder that he stuck it out as long as he did out of a sense of stubbornness and a desire to ensure those that vexed him would never defeat him and the stress of making that happen didn’t leave much space for happiness or joy.
And yet there would be times when he would find joy and these were generally occasions when he’d find himself serving the needs of others in ways he’d never expected.
One of those opportunities came during his tour of duty at Ft Leavenworth KS when he was doing the Army’s Command and General Staff College by day and a master’s degree at Webster University by night and finished both of them in that single year’s tour.
To this day, I’m still in awe that he was not only able to pull off finishing two brutal courses of study in that short of a time but that he was able to somehow drag himself out of his rack on Saturday mornings to be a volunteer referee for Ft Leavenworth Youth Soccer.
I’d never pegged him as having any interest in proper football at all much less being willing to spend the time to learn the laws of the game enough to officiate it. To be sure, he’d occasionally watch the American footy matches on Sundays on TV (and often fall asleep well before the half-time whistle) and we’d made a couple of trips down to Kansas City to take in a Royals game so he wasn’t completely opposed to sport.
And yet there he was on the pitch with whistle in hand watching for fouls and other infractions like a hawk. Every now and then, he’d tell me how much he enjoyed having his mother as his teacher in a one-room schoolhouse whilst growing up in Galatia and Raleigh IL knowing he could not get away with ANYTHING. Part of me wonders if his time with the whistle during games where I’d be playing on one of the teams was a perverse sort of revenge for what he experienced growing up.
I’ll never know because he’d never admit it but I can tell you that whilst I appreciated his competence at officiating, I often would be subjected to fouls and being run into whilst playing in goal when the other team realised a) who I was in relation to the referee and b) that my chances of defending myself was practically nil as I’d be instantly in the book should I have even thought of retaliating against the abuse I suffered in the penalty area.
As it turned out, I truly think his time as a referee was therapeutic. Apparently third-graders are still far more amenable to following orders from officers than some of the soldiers who had to do it for a living.
Once the game was finished, we’d be off to the A&W in Leavenworth proper for an after-game treat which for me meant a burger and a hand-built root beer in a frosty mug. Say what you want, the A&W was some seriously fancy eats back in the day! 🙂
At the time, I’d never imagined that many years later I’d find myself on the football pitch with the whistle in hand as a volunteer referee when the kids played in the church league just up the street in Garner. To this day, that was one of my favourite jobs ever…it can be lonely and thankless but serving the needs of the players by keeping them safe and applying the laws fairly is a joy not many people will ever experience.
But it’s one that I’m quite sure Dad did every time he stepped on the pitch. 🙂
A few years later, we’d be about halfway through his final tour at Ft Sam Houston TX, this time he’d be serving as an instructor at the Academy of Health Sciences.
Whilst it was definitely nowhere near as brutal a schedule as he’d endured in Kansas, he still had several classes to teach during the week along with all of the related paperwork such as preparing lesson plans and grading papers and examinations. I remember that quite well as I would dread the days that he’d come in with a massive pile of papers knowing full well I’d be pressed into service in his office just off the living room as his company clerk.
I think that was then I truly appreciated just how much harder the job of being a teacher is than what you imagine when you’re sitting in the seats in front of them.
He’d have been forgiven had he just concentrated on teaching his courses and dealing with the students in them.
But when I joined the Cub Scouts Pack 23 at their first meeting of the year, the call went out for volunteers to serve as the Cubmaster who oversees the operations of the several dens that make up the pack. The previous one had just gotten orders for Europe and either someone stepped up or the pack would be history.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that Dad didn’t hesitate even though I’m pretty sure he had no more idea about how the Cub Scouts worked than I did.
And yet here we were, two total newbies where each of us were poring over our respective scouting manuals trying to learn the ropes (and in my case the occasional bit of rope and knot tying!) and often making it up as we went along.
If anyone else had any inkling that we were learning on the job, they never seemed to let on. And as he settled into the role, you could see his happiness and joy that his Cub Scout pack did very well during his tenure. The Pinewood Derby was a roaring success and our couple of trips out into the boonies near Canyon Lake are experiences that I’ll never forget.
One particular one really was memorable for the absolutely miserable weather during the entire weekend. We’re talking well beyond mildly moist and straight on to bucketing down monsoons!
We had raided the Quartermaster’s stores for regulation Army pup tents for us scouts and it was clear we needn’t have bothered as the river flowing through these laughable tents was only slightly less than that flowing round the tents. We’d given up on trying to stay dry and went down to the lake to do some fishing and here’s Dad and his other poor suckers (uh, I mean parent volunteers) trying to herd us back to the tents. After the third or fourth attempt, Dad tells the other parents to leave us be and retired back to their much nicer and DRIER non-Army issued tents for the rest of the night.
We didn’t get any sleep that night and the next morning the weather cleared enough for us to do a several mile hike which most of us imagined was his revenge for our antics the night before.
His smile and twinkle in his eye was a dead giveaway that he was enjoying us marching through the bush like a bunch of zombies.
But I’d like to think he also found joy that we had really come together as a pack that stormy night near the lake in spite of all of the obstacles.
Looking back on those years, he was a natural as a Cubmaster. I have no idea how his successor fared but I do know he had big shoes to fill when Dad got his orders for Germany not too long after my Arrow of Light ceremony.
Dad invested so much of himself into the pack during his time as our Cubmaster and I’d like to think that the lives he touched as a result brought him joy from time to time.
Until next year’s post, may you find joy in the service of others as my father did so many years ago! 🙂