Looking Up Old Friends...

We spent the past week in Washington, D.C.
The first few days were devoted to meetings and the latter part of the week we reserved for spending time browsing the memorials and monuments. I had hosted a radio tour five years previous with listeners who wanted to experience the dedication of the World War II Memorial and it left me wanting more. That was my first time in Washington and I felt foolish for never having been before. Everyone should spend some time in our nation's capital if only to put your high school history lessons in perspective.

The Second World War memorial hit me like it did the first time. There is so much about it that captures the enormity of the conflict and the essence of the teamwork it took to conquer the patent evil represented by Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It's almost impossible to imagine how close they came to triumph and how very different the world would be had they prevailed.
I looked up my dad's name in the registry of those who served and felt proud of his Naval aviation service in the South Pacific.
It was touching to see a group of WW II vets from Northern Michigan in attendance the first day we were at the memorial. Many were in wheelchairs. We are losing them by the thousands each day and we will be a poorer country when they are gone.


The Korean War Memorial doesn't get the attention that it deserves; somehow that mirrors the war itself. The futility of the "conflict" is well captured in the statues depicting soldiers slogging through a field in full combat dress. The first time I saw it was in the rain and it was perfect. On a warm Spring day the troops looked miserably hot. Fitting.



The WALL always moves me. This was my war...the one I was lucky enough to miss. I've blogged before about how close I came to spending time in Southeast Asia and visiting this memorial makes me appreciate my extreme good fortune.
Some of my friends are here...on this wall. I got orders plunking me down in the middle of Kansas; others got a ticket to Vietnam. Each year that passes brings a greater realization of just how unbelievably fortunate I was. I slept on the ground in the Midwest and trained for the defense of NATO while dodging nothing more dangerous than cow pies. Timing is everything.

My high school friend, Lenny Borchard, didn't have a college deferment. He hit the Vietnam jackpot. We graduated from Spencer High School in Spencer, Iowa in 1966. I, like many others, got a student deferment to attend the University of South Dakota and wasn't snatched by the draft until 1970. Lenny was a farm kid who worked at the Big D grocery store all through high school and became a full time employee as soon as he graduated. He liked the work, (it sure beat farming), and he was on track to be a manager one day. The local draft board, however, had other plans for him. He was in the Army and fighting in Vietnam by 1967. He was dead in March of 1968.


I found his name on panel #46. I touched it.
What a waste of a good guy.

We were friends... not close friends, but certainly friends. We played baseball together with Hall, Erickson, Boyd, Swanson, White and other high school goof-offs. Lenny could hit the ball a TON. We had classes together. Made fun of the same teachers...
You get the idea.
So I stood there at the Vietnam memorial, twice in the past week, and thought about luck and chances taken. I thought about how easily things can go awry; how it could have been Lenny standing by the wall looking at and touching my name. It' all one big crap shoot.

My takeaway... I promise to always appreciate the, now 41, extra years of laughs, triumphs, and even mistakes that Ive experienced that Lenny didn't. And, I'll take more pleasure in my wonderful wife and terrific kids and, this Fall, new grandchild. All blessings that "Borch" never had. He was a good kid and would have been an even better man.

If you want to put life in perspective, get to D.C. Skip the political b.s. and get yourself to the memorials... and look up an old friend.