America’s veterans, and take stock of our misdirected values

Honor

The long, ebony monument stood forlornly in the gray light of dawn. The rain beaded and ran down its granite veneer in rivulets, like the sweat on the faces of the men and women whose memory it embraces.

The names are not those of overly indulged movie idols, self-satisfied rock stars or smug, boastful, overpaid athletes whose celebrity status is often confused with heroic stature.

The sleek, black, lithic surface is inscribed, as a lasting tribute, with the names of genuine heroes, the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in the noble causes of democracy and freedom.

I walked around the chevron configuration of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, running my fingers gingerly across the chilled register of the dead and missing, thinking how no one knows their names. Thinking how we put inconsequential TV personalities and irreverent football players on pedestals, offering them up to our children as heroes and role models, while the people who should have earned our respect and gratitude walk anonymously through our lives.

Veterans Day is observed every year on Nov. 11. America unfurls its flags and marches its high school bands down Main Street. It’s a national show of gratitude for the veterans who unselfishly answered a call of duty. But where is this flush of conscience the rest of the year?

The answer is that more and more recognition and understanding of veterans’ achievements and their needs are coming to the forefront of our national conscience. But still, a convoluted kind of logic runs through American society, like a freight train in the dark. We can only see what is beyond, in the headlight, ignoring what is around us, and forgetting the past.

We place importance on shallow, meaningless events and forget the responsibilities of a nation that was founded on the integrity of its people. Puffed-up millionaire athletes bargain for even more outrageous contracts, while the homeless sleep, shivering in the streets; children have no respect for their teachers or themselves; and aliens with incomprehensible murder in their hearts are allowed to roam our streets while corporate giants battle among themselves to freshen our underarms and convince us that we need more of their useless products, while veterans quietly wind their unsung ways through our communities.

It is time for America to reevaluate its priorities, to take a long, hard look at the misdirected values that it places on its “heroes’’ and perhaps recall the words of President John F. Kennedy: “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.” ALVIN MOORE

White Oak