On to the future: Men and women of good character needed
I just arrived back home from a trip to Florida with my wife, Debbie. We had a lot of good experiences and we met a lot of fine people.
On everyone’s minds of the people I talked to was the topic of the future. What is going to happen? What are things going to be like? When will we get back to some semblance of normalcy? Relating to employment, health and societal upheavals, lots of people are concerned.
Folks with more than a passing interest in sports are also concerned with their return and when. Relating to our fair state, the Arkansas Activities Association state mandated two weeks of dead time for the last half of June (no organized athletic workouts or practices for athletes of member schools) but beyond that looms July 1 when most schools across the nation start to ramp up their football off season work outs to prepare their athletes for the rigors of football training camps in August.
Will these normal starting dates be allowed under the national and state government guidelines that have stifled and held back the normal economic activity and freedom of movement of most Americans or will they go forward as planned? My trip to Florida demonstrated that at least those people are more than willing to have a chance of getting back to having a freer society.
When any nation goes through crises, that is the time it is important to have in place a citizenry capable of meeting challenges. It’s conditions like these that really highlight the great value sports programs like football can impart to participants.
Not knowing what is ahead, developing young people who are physically healthy and physically tough is especially valuable in unsettled times. It is no coincidence that a lot of former high school football players go on to become leaders in things those young folks never contemplated. The discipline that comes with mastering a physically difficult sport is a life skill. The eagerness and willingness to take on and complete hard work is also a life skill. With so many young people leaving college clamoring to be cared for by the state, the survival of our nation depends of having kids mature into productive, hard working and disciplined citizens.
Young Americans with life skills can’t be in short supply for the U.S. to endure.
While I was in Ft. Pierce, Fla., I had the good fortune to visit the Navy SEALS UDT National Museum. The SEALS program was born on Ft. Pierce beaches during World War II. I discovered the SEALS we know today may not have ever come to be without the work and insight of Draper Kauffman, a man with a most interesting story.
Kauffman was the son of a naval officer and attended the Naval Academy where he was the top swimmer for the academy team and eventually graduated second in his class. However, he was denied a commission in the Navy because of his bad eyesight, needing glasses for nearsightedness.
He went to work for a shipping company, skippering large shipping vessels that traversed the waters between the U.S. and Europe in the 1930s. In the late 1930s, he was required to attend meetings in Nazi Germany regarding shipping with German firms and while there, he became alarmed with what Adolph Hitler was doing and planning to do.
When the war started, he quit the shipping firm and volunteered to be a ambulance driver for the French army fighting Germany. He was captured on one of his trips, and held for a few months. This was early 1941 and since the U.S. was not at war with them, the Germans released him.
He immediately went to Britain and joined the British navy. Though not trained in explosives, he was assigned a duty of defusing German bombs that were dropped on London but didn’t explode. He quickly learned the skill and was quite successful in defusing a lot of those bombs.
With a furlough granted him, Kauffman went back to the U.S. to visit his folks who were being visited by Admiral Chester Nimitz, who became a decorated WW II officer. Upon learning that Kauffman had been denied a commission in the
Navy, Nimitz went to work to right that wrong and Kauffman soon got a job as an explosives defusing expert one month before Pearl Harbor.
From there Kauffman, with his growing expertise in explosives, decided to organize a group of men who could sneak into enemy territory and plant explosives in advance of American invasions, like the looming landings at Normandy Beach in France. He chose the beaches of Ft. Pierce where they simulated the landings that happened in 1944, with 150,000 men training there. They were then known as the Navy Combat Underwater Demolition Team.
They arrived at the Normandy beaches ahead of the invasion force and they succeeded in blowing up the German defences in enough places to allow the men to through and off the beach. They went on to pull off some amazing feats in a number of battles against Japan, notably Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Against the Japanese, the frogmen as they were known, swam to their targets from miles out with only a knife and sack of explosives. As time went on, their tasks become more varied and difficult and they were renamed the SEALS in the 1960s, as they attack by Sea, Air or Land. They are the best of the best.
And this all happened because of a man who would not take “no” for an answer, who kept at it until he became what he was meant to be. He was an athlete, he was a scholar, but most of all, he loved his country and did what he could to protect it.
Sports can build character.
Watching the news the past couple of weeks, you can see there are a whole lot of young people who are devoid of character roaming the streets of our cities. I would dare say that none of them ever participated in anything that might have given them real insights into life. •••
Editor’s note: John McGee, an award-winning columnist, sports writer and art teacher at Pea Ridge elementary schools, writes a regular sports column for The Times. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. He can be contacted through The Times at prtnews@nwadg.com.