Does your Dad have a name?

We just celebrated Veteran's Day this past Friday with a school wide assembly. In what has become tradition, the school invites school and parish families to invite their veterans to join us to be honored.  Grandparents, moms and dads, retired and active, men and women from each branch of the Armed Forces showed up with their host student.  Some served in battle, others during times of peace. This year we even had a "past grandparent" as he called himself join us because in his words, "This is just a good thing that the school is doing."  As you can imagine most of our special veterans couldn't join us so hundreds of kids wrote their names on bright yellow cards and held them up during a blessing.  It is a pretty sacred moment.

This year, Bob Miller the teacher organizer decided to have each of the kids introduce their veteran to the assembly.  When he and I talked about this we were a little anxious about whether the little kids could pull this off but we decided to give it a try.  Luckily for us, Julie Joyce, our Physical Ed teacher,  held the mic for each child as they stood in front.  She asked each to introduce their guest and what service and rank they were.  We started with some  of the older kids to get us into a rhythm but wonderfully, that rhythm never happened.

Each student, some as young as kindergarten, either held the hand of their grandparent or their grandparent wrapped their arms around their grandkids.  Sometimes the parent was sandwiched between two of their children, moms flanked by sons, dads bending down to remind their child what branch of the service they were in.   Kids couldn't hear Grandpa tell them their ranks or forgot before they could say it into the microphone. A few became "first class" just because that is what their kids said they were and quite honestly, it didn't matter.  What mattered was the families stood together in a gym full of people grateful for someone's courage and willingness to serve our country.  We didn't have a precise, uniformed, presentation of each veteran-we had kids of all ages proudly standing with someone they love and that was pretty special.

Our guest speaker was Lt. Commander Dan Shaw who is a chaplain and a Lutheran pastor here in Tacoma.  Lt. Commander Shaw talked to the kids about having the perfect job because he gets to serve his country and to serve God.  His story about baptizing a one-time non-believing  soldier in a river in Iraq brought tears to his eyes and hushed our gym.  What got me a little teary was when Julie asked a little one who was her guest?  The girl answered, "This is my dad." Julie responded, "Does your Dad have a name?"  "Daddy," she said.  

I am glad her hero was with us last Friday because we know too many soldiers don't return to their families.  We ended our assembly by praying that all of our soldiers be safe, that those who are injured receive help, and that our country thank veterans for their service.  So I ask you to take  a moment and pray this Wednesday for a soldier, a veteran.   Join us in praying for peace.

St. Patrick pray for us.