Veteran's Day: Being A Professional

As most of you know, the closest I ever came to soldiering may have been marching in formation in various armories around NYC and holding an M1 at arm's length during "jug" (detention) on the roof overlooking 15th St at Xavier High School. This was probably a good thing for the country, but left a gap in my resume and a debt owed to so many who served.

I was thinking today about my friend's son, who is in Afghanistan under daily attack. I was also thinking about another friend's son, who had recently returned from Afghanistan, when, out of the blue, I received the following email:

Friends and Family

Yesterday my command asked me to leave this Thursday for Afghanistan to support an investigation into the combat deaths of four Marines.

I will be gone for less than a month, possibly much less, but I wanted to let you know.  Some of you may not even know I'm back from the first trip ... whether you knew or not, I look forward to celebrating my second homecoming of the year in December, I've enjoyed seeing so many of you during the first.

Semper Fi,

Kurt

Kurt Sanger, Jr.is the son of my best and closest friend, Kurt Sr., who died tragically in 1989. Kurt Jr. attended Poly Prep, Holy Cross, and became a Marine and a lawyer along the way. After serving in the Adjutant Corps in what we used to call Yugoslavia, he returned to the States, wrote a pretty decent novel about his war experience and tried to integrate himself back into civilian life.

As it turned out, that didn't go so smoothly. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him, talking to him about the "old days" in Forest Hills Gardens that he remembered from tales his father had told him. It became a wonderful way for both of us to connect with something and someone we had lost. Eventually, Kurt re-enlisted and shipped to Afghanistan for the first time last year, from where he would send me messages from time to time.

The great basketball artist and soldier of the courts, Dr. J. (Julius Erving), said once that, "Being a professional means doing the things we love to do on the days that we don't want to do them." Amen. I keep that quote close-by every day, and today I shared that thought with Kurt Sanger, Jr., Marine, Lawyer, Loving Son, Loyal Friend, one of thousands of true professionals at home and around the world like him.

Today is a day to take off our Red or Blue political uniforms, to refrain from our nearly incessant blather about what are, in the Big Picture, silly things. Today is a day we don't give a hoot about the size of bonuses, the Dow's finish or, or how many games the Knicks will lose. Today we simply salute Kurt and the other real professionals and say: Be Safe, Hurry Home.

To all of you Veterans, Thank You. Enjoy Your Day.