The date was the 9^th of December, 1980, and I awoke to a rain-soaked Tuesday morning in Springdale, Arkansas; I was to fly later that morning. As the clock radio came to life, I lay dumbfounded, and a sick feeling washed over me. As the reporter spoke, I realized that I was experiencing another of life’s inevitable gut punches …” Last night, December 8^th, 1980, John Lennon was killed outside his brownstone apartment in New York…”. The rain against the bedroom window felt like the tears of a world suffering a newly broken heart. In a few hours, I would be looking down on the forests and fields of middle America, but now they would look different. The world had changed, and I wondered if we, as humans, would ever “give peace a chance?”

I was a first-grader at the Evergreen Elementary school on the massive Ft. Lewis Army base when the speaker came to life to announce to 35 rowdy kids that our president, John F. Kennedy, was dead. The teachers all recoiled in shock, cried, and hugged each other; school was canceled, and we all went home to a mom glued to the black and white television hanging on Walter Cronkite’s every word. My father left Ft. Lewis later that day to sit on alert somewhere on the southern coast of America, awaiting a foreign attack that never came. He was to be gone for many weeks, and I, as a crew-cut, G.I.-Joe playing, sling-shot-carrying six-year-old, did not realize it, but the world was now a radically different place.

I was sweeping the hangar floor on an “Okahoma-hot” August day a few weeks before the start of my junior year in college. Suddenly, another of the airport line crew workers rushed into the hangar to ask if I had heard the news. I had no idea what he was referring to. “Elvis, did you hear about Elvis?” He informed me that Elvis had “left the building,” only this time for good. He was found dead earlier that day at his mansion in Memphis. “The King” was dead, and his court (the world) would mourn for decades. Could this be the actual day that Don McLean spoke of when he lamented about “the day the music died?” The world of entertainment had changed forever.

The shivering cold that January morning in 1986 helped cool the hot brakes on the big Boeing 727 as it sat in the chocks at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. We had landed from Detroit less than thirty minutes earlier, and I was signing the dispatch release for our return flight. The wall-mounted television in gate A4 held the focused attention of our three dozen or so passengers, and I looked up to see a beautiful Florida morning and a gleaming white orbital vehicle roaring to life with monstrous flames and billowing smoke. Seconds later, with the glow of a thousand sunrises, it lifted into a clear, cold sky, and one minute and thirteen seconds, and 46000’ later, it was gone…a bright flash, with twin plumes extending like twisted fingers into the cobalt blue sky. Seven Americans died, and the world was in shock. It would be almost three years before humans would slip from gravity once more. We had changed, and the world changed with us.

And the granddaddy of all “gut punches” …what history would name “9-11”. I have written about that “day of days” many times; suffice it to say, it was a day that changed my world of aviation forever. In the heat of battle, I failed to comprehend just how fundamental that change would become. More importantly, it changed the entire human race for eternity.

My personal worst gut punch came courtesy of a blinking telephone “message” light in my room at the Sonesta Hotel in Amsterdam. I awoke at noon from my post-all-night flight from Boston, noticed the light, and called home. I sat stunned and broke down, weeping at what I had been told. Suddenly, and without warning, a giant piece of my world was gone, and I was left with a hole in my heart that took several years and many more tears to soothe. The date was February 4^th, 1993, and I had just learned through the phone receiver that my dear father had died during the night. He was my mentor, one of the two “rocks” of our family (I was to lose the other…my dear mother…three months later), and was the driving force behind my career in the sky. I suddenly felt that I was now “flying without a compass,” and in many ways, I most certainly was. I must now find a way to live my life without his loving guidance, and attempt to be the kind of man that he showed me I must become. In some ways, I have utterly failed, but hopefully, in some other ways, I will have made him proud. The world did not change that day, but my world most certainly did.

I offer these “signposts” in history (global and personal) because a few months ago, I was feeling many of the same emotions that I felt from those events. I apologize for the delay in putting them to pen. Suffice it to say that the death of one’s beloved nation is not an easy thing to vocalize…another “gut punch.”

Politics suck.

I despise political seasons, for lots of reasons. They are too long, too over-the-top, and too…well, everything. The current one, however, is the worst my 60+ years have witnessed.

I will not mention names or political parties but simply say that during the current political season, one party (and their candidate/s) seems bent on obtaining the Seat of Power in America by destroying the other candidate. Students of history (the greatest teacher of all) know that this is a page from the playbook of every despot through time immemorial. The empire of Rome was destroyed from within by this perversion of power, and in recent times, we have many examples of evil doing what evil does. Mao jailed and murdered his opponents, Hitler destroyed the German Chancellery, and his opponents mysteriously disappeared. Lenin and Stalin murdered the Czar (and his family), then jailed and executed what was left of the ruling class to gain power. In every case, the “crimes” were fabricated, the courts and its cast of useful idiots were aligned, and the light of choice and freedom was snuffed out. Most importantly, the misguided people who despised or hated those being removed celebrated joyously in the streets. Until the darkness came for them… and it did…it always does. Simply ask the current head of local municipal power in New York City; the wolves he has aligned himself with are currently knocking at his door.

In this season of the body politic, things have gone from their normal bad to the horribly surreal.

A candidate for the highest office in the land had been crucified, both legally, personally, and almost physically.

He has been legally crucified for the last many months, all intending to remove him from the political scene. You may not be overly enamored with the person who was accused and/or convicted of a bizarre set of “crimes,” but a wise person will see past the man. A democracy (or, to be more precise, our Representative Republic) cannot survive in an atmosphere of tit-for-tat politically motivated revenge court proceedings. Lady Justice is wearing a blindfold for a reason… she is intended to be, in fact, “blind,” and, most importantly, her scales are designed to tip in both directions. In these proceedings, the blindfold seems to have been angrily torn off, and her scales have been weaponized. This will not work in our America; this type of justice, if continued, will certainly devolve into violence…it always does.

Rule to live by: Do not love politicians. Love (or hate) their policies.

I learned a supremely valuable lesson years ago, and it was the following: politicians are flawed… all of them, with the possibility of one notable exception. This was a person whose pure heart was only matched by his incredible vision for all Americans, and his name was Lincoln. Hatred and evil took him before his time, but the brief years that he steered our country were some of the brightest the world has ever seen. Sadly, they were also some of the darkest our country had ever lived through. Politics can ruin nations, and it nearly ruined ours.

Politics can also save nations.

I recently wrote the check to pay for my democracy by logging several minutes in a local voting booth. With my research behind me and my “vote for the policies, NOT the person” rules in place, I worked to divorce feelings from that sacred cubicle. Failing to do this is a huge error (THAT MANY AMONG US MAKE) that has enormously far-reaching consequences. An endearing life lesson from my lovely parents was to “think with your head, feel with your heart,” and although difficult at times, it is supremely worth the effort. When I hold a precious grandchild in my arms, my heart bursts with feeling; when I am picking a leader, my head hurts with thinking. If I like or admire the person in question, great…., but it dare not be an integral part of the equation. I do not aspire to become best friends with them; I do not want to play golf with them or invite them into my home for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not looking for them to be my “life coach” or “spiritual advisor”, or even a member of my book club (I actually don’t belong to a book club), but I do expect them to fulfill certain requirements for my vote.  

To represent me in our sacred halls of power, I require but a few things from them: keep my country safe, attempt to keep peace in the world, keep the lion’s share of my money in my pocket (not theirs), and try to stay out of my life as much as possible. It’s actually very simple. They should never lose sight of two very important facts: 1). it is a privilege to serve the people of this country, and, 2). they serve at the pleasure of the citizens who gave them the power they wield. Never forget those two facts, and they and I will get along just fine.

Side note: If one is looking for a “nice” or “perfect” person to sit at the controls of the country (meaning, your life), then you may be looking at the wrong occupational group of people. Again, probably the last truly “morally good” person who occupied 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue was over 250 years ago. Let’s take a moment to look at some of the personality traits of a few of our country’s past leaders.

-Washington was prone to brooding.

-Madison had a world-class temper.

-Jefferson never met a mirror he did not fall in love with.

-Grant drank to excess and was prone to fits of depression.

-Andrew Jackson was a hot-headed bully who killed a man in a duel after he insulted his wife.

-Teddy Roosevelt would kick your ass (and had no problem telling you so).

-Eisenhower smoked like a chimney and kept a mistress as his driver.

-Kennedy was a world-class philanderer.

-Lyndon Johnson was a rude jerk and had a profane vocabulary that was not only immense but often used.

-Nixon could be rude and loved to dominate every conversation.

-Clinton made Kennedy look like a choir boy, placed his hand on the Bible, and openly lied to the American people (not the first or the last politician to do so I might add).

-Bush’s patriotism allowed advice from warmongers against his better judgment.

-Trump “embellishes” facts and is prone to hyperbole (what man isn’t guilty of both…ever listened to a fishing tale?)

My point is that all of them are/were flawed human beings, but all had some good (even great) leadership abilities and policies.

Again, suppose you do not like the person who has been the target of the current “Stalinist” persecution (a person continually maligned in the media that has had attempts on their life… possibly stoked from hatred fueled by said media coverage). That feeling is certainly your choice as a citizen of this country, but I ask you to do one thing. Take a moment away from your disgust/hatred and/or glee to ponder the fact that if an arm of the United States government and the power of the media (social or print/television) can squash a world-famous billionaire (who happens to be the leading candidate for the opposition party), then they can certainly squash you, too. The wolves of power are never satiated, there is always the “next threat” that must be dealt with. Will that be you?

Love the person in question, or hate the person in question. That is not the issue. The issue is this: where do you stand on freedom and democracy and the “power of the people?” In our current America, do we decide our collective fates with crazed rhetoric, disturbed people with “John Wilkes Booth”-like hatred in their hearts, or an army of attorneys? Or do we determine our fates with a ballot?

I implore you to do two things in the next few days.

1. Vote… hundreds of thousands of Americans have died since that first “shot heard round the world” to secure your right to do just that. Don’t waste their blood…VOTE.
2. Make your decisions with your brain and not your heart. Go home and use your heart to hug your kids, or pet your dog, but don’t vote with your “feelings”…the act is far too important for that.

The tattoo on my left arm reads: “WE THE PEOPLE est. 1776”

Where do YOU stand? One thing is certain: there will be no bench warmers on this issue…. The fate of our/YOUR country will not allow it. It is time to take a stand. DO SOMETHING. Talk, write, donate, put a sign in your yard. This is not a time to do nothing…to appease the storm. Spending your time hoping the storm will not touch your world is a fool’s errand.

Churchill once famously proclaimed, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”  The crocodile does not care about your feelings…nor does history or the universe…it only cares about your actions.

Decide where you stand and act. History will be written in the next few days.

God bless America.