Salute

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and today is Veteran’s Day.

My father was a veteran of the Army and was always proud to state that while he served, there was never one invasion on Fort Dix, NJ, where he was stationed.

He was also happy that he was stationed in Central Florida for a while, where he met my mother.

My father also loved to tell a story about Veteran’s Day, November 11, and General Foch (no relation).

Marshall Ferdinand Foch was a French general who was appointed the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in 1918.

A devout Catholic, Foch attended Mass every day at 11am, no matter where he was. Even in the middle of a battle field, he would grab a Catholic Chaplin and they would put together a make-shift Mass at 11am, so that Foch could pray for peace.

Foch is the person who accepted the German request for an armistice in 1918, bringing World War I to a halt. My father felt it was no coincidence that Foch went to Mass every day at 11am to pray for peace and the war ended on the 11^th day of the 11^th month at the 11^th hour.

That is why Veteran’s Day is celebrated today, on November 11.

I never served in the military. Growing up a ‘hippie-wanna-be’ I was against the war. War is expensive, Peace is priceless.  I was always a big believer in the motto: Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?

I had two uncles who served in Viet Nam and I saw what it did to them. My one uncle was a big semi-pro football player from the south and one of the toughest guys I ever met when I was a kid.  I really looked up to him, literally (6’4”, 265 pounds). He saw serious heat during the war, serving on the front lines. He was never wounded, physically, but many of his buddies were, and he came back a different person. For years he awoke in the middle of most nights screaming, covered in sweat. (sounds like a lot of my dates in college).

In my line of work I am around a lot of college athletes. I deal with 20 different varsity teams, but having been a college baseball player I have usually been a bit closer to the baseball players. In my 33 years on the job we’ve had over 30 players selected in the professional baseball draft, with four of them reaching the Major Leagues.  When the players would ask me about my baseball career I always gave them the same line. “Yea, I was almost drafted, but the Viet Nam war ended.”

That is probably the one good thing that the disgraced president Richard Nixon did; get us out of Viet Nam. Funny how JFK is always remembered so positively, him and Jackie and their ‘Camelot’ administration. Yet it was JFK who got us into Viet Nam in the first place.

And poor LBJ. He was surrounded with advisors who kept telling him we can win this thing as long as we kept escalating, sending in more troops. Once he figured out they were wrong he wanted no more of being President of a divided country.

I was always a big fan of John Lennon. Imagine there’s no country, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that. That is why they don’t stand for the national anthem or serve in the military. They try to live their lives the way the Bible says to. To serve no man, no country, just God Jehovah.

It seems a bit impractical in today’s world, but if everyone in the world believed that, we might just have a perfect world. But we don’t. If we did there would be no wars. When was the last time there was not one single war going on somewhere in the world? Never, as long as history has been recorded. Even with all of those beauty pageant contestants wishing for World Peace.

Even though I have always been against war, I have always respected the American men and women who take part in them. Being a soldier deserves respect, and gratitude. It takes a certain type of person, with certain qualities.

My family recently became soldiers, so-to-speak, fighting the war on Alzheimer’s Disease, ever since my wife Terry was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Many of my friends and family members raised a great deal of money in Terry’s name when we attended a Walk to End Alzheimer’s in New England, and my son and daughter recently took part in a similar Walk in Philadelphia.

Like war, Alzheimer’s has many casualties. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death.

And like Viet Nam, the fight against Alzheimer’s is a war I am afraid we cannot win. Not at this point, anyway.  But our advisors keep telling us that we can win this, eventually, if the support and assistance is escalated.

I am grateful that these advisors are not the same ones that LBJ had. I salute them for their work trying to find a cure.

As you know, a salute is a gesture used to display respect. In medieval times, Knights would raise their visors to each other to show their faces and to show friendly intentions.  In more modern times, it was military custom for subordinates to remove their headgear in the presence of superiors, even as recently as the American Revolution.  As military headgear grew more cumbersome in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the act of removing your hat was gradually converted into the simpler gesture of grasping or touching the visor and issuing a courteous salutation.

A salute.

In baseball, we used to tip our caps to the crowd when we received applause. Unfortunately I rarely had the opportunity to tip my cap.  After I hit my first collegiate home run I returned to the dugout to find my cap at the bottom of the Gatorade jug.  When I returned to the field and tipped it I got a face full of green Gatorade. After the game a girl I was seeing greeted me with something much better than a salute, but could not figure out why my face was so sticky.

Today, I tip my cap to all members of the armed forces who have sacrificed so many things for the benefit of our country. Most of them have suffered far worse than a sticky face.

And I salute the many doctors and scientists who are working on a cure for Alzheimer’s.

There may never be World Peace, but hopefully someday there will be a cure for Alzheimer’s.

Until next time, tip your cap to a Vet, and fight for a cure to Alzheimer’s.

Bud