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December 21, 2006
A son remembers his dad, the hero
This is possbily the finest euology delivered by a son to memorialize the passing of his warrior father.
And, yes, it's yet another piece of writing by Pat Conroy, but damn, it's good.
The children of fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea.
Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground.
Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars, while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North Korean battalion.
We tell of men who made widows of the wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children.
You don't like war or violence? Or napalm? Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky?
Then let's talk about your fathers, not ours. When we talk about the aviators who raised us and the Marines who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to have been America's enemies when our fathers passed overhead".
We were raised by the men who made the United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century in all recorded history.
Our fathers made sacred those strange, singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles.
Your fathers made communities like Beaufort decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for democracy.
[...]
Don Conroy was a simple man and an American hero. His wit was remarkable; his intelligence frightening; and his sophistication next to none.
He was a man's man and I would bet he hadn't spend a thousand dollars in his whole life on his wardrobe ... He was a beer drinker who thought wine was for Frenchmen or effete social climbers like his children.
Ah! His children.
Here is how God gets a Marine Corps fighter pilot. He sends him seven squirrelly, mealy-mouth children who march in peace demonstrations, wear Birkenstocks, flirt with vegetarianism, invite cross-dressers to dinner and vote for candidates that Dad would line up and shoot.
If my father knew how many tears his children had shed since his death, he would be mortally ashamed of us all and begin yelling that he should've been tougher on us all, knocked us into better shape - that he certainly didn't mean to raise a passel of kids so weak and tacky they would cry at his death.
Don Conroy was the best uncle I ever saw, the best brother, the best grandfather, the best friend-and my God, what a father. After my mother divorced him and The Great Santini was published, Don Conroy had the best second act I ever saw. He never was simply a father. This was The Great Santini.
[...]
Let us leave you and say goodbye, Dad, with the passwords that bind all Marines and their wives and their children forever. The Corps was always the most important thing.
Semper Fi, Dad
Semper Fi, O Great Santini.
Do I really have to tell you to read the whole thing?
Posted by Mike Lief at December 21, 2006 10:16 AM
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Comments
I dont understand the fixation on war war war. Let's focus on music, art, the sciences, architecture and other aspects of life for a change.
Posted by: Spring Tulip at December 23, 2006 03:11 PM