Captain’s Column

I recently had the opportunity to speak about Veterans Day at a community event. It was a great speaking engagement for which the host asked me to speak from the heart about my own personal feelings about Veterans Day.

During the talk, I shared how my thoughts on Veterans Day were shaped by childhood experiences and the heroes I met growing up, heroes like Vietnam Veterans Major Paul Tatum and SFC Larry Guizar. I shared how Veterans Day became very personal for me after my own combat experiences, as I became a Veteran myself. Ultimately though, my role as a father of two boys led me to understand that Veterans Day was not about me, but about legacy, about how one generation tells the next generation that service and sacrifice are important.

This notion of communicating the importance of service to the next generation is not new. 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greeks practiced it too. In ancient Sparta, highly regarded for its military might, only two types of people would be honored with a marked grave: soldiers who died in war and mothers who died in childbirth. Meanwhile, in Athens, the city state that gave birth to democracy, there is a fascinating example from one of their famous playwrights, Aeschylus, known today as the “Father of Greek Tragedy.”

Aeschylus was the author of the Oresteia, Prometheus Bound, and nearly 70 others; he was famous in his own time as well as ours. He was also a war veteran, having served as a hoplite (heavy infantry) at the battle of Marathon in 490 BC. At that battle, the Athenian hoplites saved their city state from the Persian empire, then the most powerful empire in the known world. What’s striking is that his grave stone inscription did not mention his fame as a writer at all, just his military service:

Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of

Euphorion, the Athenian,

who perished in the wheat-bearing land

of Gela;

of his noble prowess the grove of

Marathon can speak,

and the long-haired Persian knows it

well.

Here in Corpus Christi, I am honored to be part of a community where service is also highly regarded. I am honored to serve here among so many others who also serve, both in the military and in other fields such as police officers, fire fighters, EMTs, nurses, doctors, community service volunteers, and many, many others. This is a community that is definitely telling the next generation about the value of service, and I am grateful to be a part of that!