Freedom to Play

I met an elderly gentleman a few weeks ago during a work interview. He is a man of incredible guts and substance. One of the original eight frogmen (they weren’t even called frogmen in WWII when he served, he and his comrades made them all that they are), they were the guys who would swim miles at a time ins the ocean to scope out an area before the whole navy set in for the kill. They have an important job – vitally important.

As he told me the story about his adventures in the water, he went between laughter and tears – still remembering those events better than he does what he had for lunch.

I don’t see myself as particularly patriotic. In fact, when I was in college and heard that “Oh, say can you see…” before the a.m. classes, I thought more than once about just walking right on through it with the pretense of not hearing it.

The change occurred my senior year. The girl who spent high school games turned the wrong direction talking to the crowd suddenly found herself at every sporting event as an intern in the athletics department at BYU. I started at, “this is a defense, this is an offense,” and kept right on through digs, dunks and the defensive line. And that Star-Spangled Banner. Before the game, the crowd stands. Silence. And then those words. It’s just … I can’t explain it.

This country is about dreams and the opportunity that any person has to fulfill theirs. It’s about freedom to be and to do and to have enough to share. Freedom to hit a baseball – whether girl or boy, regardless of where you grew up. To speak and to pray. The freedoms that people like my pre-frogman friend give their lives to protect. I hope someday to be an eighth of the person he has been.

He was the only one of his original team that finished that war. The only one. He took two bullets, each time returning to the water two weeks later because there was no one else to do his job. Without people like him, we would have a devastatingly different sort of life. From Columbus to Washington to today, God blesses America. And I’m so grateful for this land that I truly love.