Part of our recent trip to DC included visiting two memorials that commemorate significant events in our nation’s history. The World War II Memorial opened in 2004. It is located between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, near the end of the rectangular Reflecting Pool. The installation features two large, semicircular areas – one honoring the European Theater of the war, the other for the Pacific.
When you start talking about that war, it’s easy to get “bogged down” in the minutia of historical details, dates, places, and people, and to get lost in arguments about the political and economic causes about what started the war and how did it conclude. But the designers of this memorial have made sure that you don’t forget those who “more than self, their country loved, and mercy, more than life.”
It was during World War I that families of military personnel first began displaying Service Banners with blue stars for each member of the family that was on active duty in any of the branches of the armed forces. If that family member were killed in action, the blue star would be replaced with a gold one, and so the term “Gold Star Family” came to be.
At the World War II Memorial there is an enormous curving wall over a pool, and on that wall are placed thousands of gold stars. At one side is a small panel explaining what Gold Stars mean, and that each of the 4,048 stars on the wall represents 100 Americans. Do the math, and you can figure out that more than 400,000 Americans were killed or remained missing after that war. Let that number sink in a minute: so many sons, brothers, husbands, fathers. Such a dear price paid for our freedom.
Later that afternoon, we had a chance to visit the Vietnam War Memorial, with the names of more than 58,000 service men and women who were KIA or MIA engraved on those somber black stone walls. It was a controversial design when it was dedicated in 1982, and to some, remains so today. But whatever your opinion about the wall, there is no denying the impact that seeing it creates.
I didn’t serve in Vietnam – it was winding down by the time I graduated – but one of my best friends from high school did, and I know many others who did as well. One Haskell boy who served was Charles B. “Chuck” Goodwin.
Chuck is remembered as a good boy from a hard-working family. After graduating from HHS, he joined the Navy and became an aviator, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He flew off the deck of a carrier to provide air support for the ground troops, and then one day, he didn’t come back. He was listed as “missing” for many years, but his body was eventually recovered, and he is buried in the Veteran’s Cemetery in Abilene.
When Kathy and I first moved here in 1980, I met his mom; she was a member of the Christian Church where I was preaching, and she lived over on South Avenue L, I think. In her living room was a shadowbox with Chuck’s picture and his medals, and next to it was a framed pencil tracing of his name, made from the memorial wall. With our guide’s help, I was able to look him up in the directory and find his name on the wall.
At the Vietnam memorial that day, not far from the Lincoln Monument, I thought about a letter that President Lincoln had written to a grieving mother, Mrs. Bixby. He had been shown a file that five of her sons had been killed in Civil War battles – information that turned out not to be completely accurate; “only” three of her sons had died – but his letter still remains a powerful tribute. Let his words honor all those who never came home.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
Sharing a Sip with Dusty Garison 