Happy Fourth of July from Ralph!

LET US CELEBRATE JULY THE FOURTH AND DO IT APPROPRIATELY!

REMEMBER: IT IS OUR DAY OF COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE!

On special days when we honor those who fought to free us from Great Britain and those who continue to keep us free from all foes, I am reminded of this poem.

                                

               BACK

They ask me where I’ve been,

And what I’ve done and seen.

And what can I reply

Who knows it wasn’t I,

But someone just like me,

Who went across the sea

And with my head and hands

Killed men in foreign lands . . .

Though I must bear the blame

Because he bore my name.

-      WILFRED WILSON GIBSON

1878 – 1962; British Poet

Please celebrate July 4^th with respect, dignity and honor for our active duty military and our 20 million veterans.  IT IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE WHAT THEY HAVE SUFFERED FOR YOU.  A prayer for our country, its citizens, law enforcement and military seems appropriate to me at the beginning of the big meal of the day.  WAVE THAT FLAG!

Liberty is an expensive banquet and so it continues to be; however, the military and its veterans always pick up the check for you.

Ralph B. Strickland, Jr.

PS Perhaps this anecdote will make this poem clearer to you. 

When I returned from Vietnam in the summer of 1971 after 11 months and 28 days “in country,” my beautiful wife Drusylla calmly told me that if I did not become the man she loved and who married her in 1968 and was the father of her child (our daughter was 3 months old when I shipped out), who went to Vietnam and not the man who came home and whom she did not know, she would leave me and take our daughter with her. 

If you know me this sentence will be a shocker – she told me that because of my words and behavior she was afraid for herself and our daughter.

In a million years I would never have hurt them but it seemed so to my wife at the time.

War changes every single man and many respond in the same way.  I immediately made a list of things I needed to change and went about changing them to keep my family together.  We never separated and later had a second child in 1975 – a boy.

We have been happily married now for 44 years as of June 14 – FLAG DAY!

Notice that she did not walk out – she believed in me and gave me a chance to change.

Those in law enforcement know one of the real hazards of the job is the potential for divorce – just as in the military.

I could not love my wife more nor thank her enough for that second chance.

A young lady mourns her fiancé at Arlington National Cemetery.  Freedom isn’t free; somebody always pays.