Knoxify

On the spur of the moment, I decided to attend the Vet­er­ans Day pro­gram at the Ten­nessee Vet­er­ans Ceme­tery this year. Although I drive by the solemn rows of tomb­stones every day, I’d never ven­tured up the hill to the octag­o­nal struc­ture at the top. This year, in the wake of the Fort Hood mas­sacre, I felt moved to do so. I wanted to honor our vet­er­ans in a per­sonal way. My dad, a Korean War vet­eran, went with me to the ser­vice hosted by the Ten­nessee Chap­ter of the State Guard Asso­ci­a­tion of the United States. Nei­ther of us knew what to expect.

Other than a brief stint in UT’s Air Force ROTC, where my only claim to fame was to be nom­i­nated to the mil­i­tary ball court, I’ve never had the priv­i­lege of serv­ing my coun­try in the armed forces. But there are peo­ple close to me who have served and still do.

I’m espe­cially proud of my uncle, retired Army Colonel William McClure Keel­ing, a Knoxville native who served as a sur­geon in four mil­i­tary con­flicts: World War II, the Korean War, Viet­nam (where he com­manded the 18^th Sur­gi­cal Hos­pi­tal at Kwang Tri) and the first Iraq War, when he was called back to active duty under Oper­a­tion Desert Storm. “It looked like we were in trou­ble in the Mid­dle East, and they were going to need more peo­ple in the Army,” he said at the time.

On this blus­tery Novem­ber 11, a hun­dred or so peo­ple gath­ered to pay trib­ute to our men and women who “serve to pre­serve this land of hopes and dreams,” as one of the speak­ers so aptly put it.

“Wars are fought not by John Wayne and Sylvester Stal­lone, where the good guys always win,” said the Rev­erend John Jus­tice in his invo­ca­tion. “Real wars are fought by good guys who some­times die.”

Eddie Man­nis, orig­i­nally from Pow­ell, was part of the pro­gram. A suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man who founded Pres­tige Clean­ers, he’s also a com­mu­nity activist. But the rea­son he was speak­ing on Vet­er­ans Day was because of his com­mit­ment to Hon­o­rAir Knoxville, which he estab­lished. Hon­o­rAir Knoxville is spon­sored by Pres­tige Clean­ers, Covenant Health and Home Fed­eral Bank in part­ner­ship with the Rotary Foun­da­tion of Knoxville. The organization’s stated pur­pose is to fly as many East Ten­nessee World War II vet­er­ans as pos­si­ble to Wash­ing­ton D.C. to see the World War II Memo­r­ial built in their honor.

Man­nis said over 16 mil­lion Amer­i­cans fought in WWII; the youngest was just 12 years old. 400,000 Amer­i­cans were killed in action, and 600,000 were wounded. There are fewer than two mil­lion WWII vet­er­ans still alive today. In less than five years, the Great­est Gen­er­a­tion will be gone.

Hon­o­rAir exists in other cities, but it was Man­nis’ vision that brought it to Knoxville. The first flight was in Octo­ber 2007. Since then, Man­nis and his team have flown 600 WWII vet­er­ans to Wash­ing­ton D.C. for a whirl­wind day-long all-expense-paid adven­ture that cul­mi­nates with the chang­ing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Sol­dier. The sev­enth flight is sched­uled for April 28, 2010.

In his Vet­er­ans Day col­umn in the Knoxville News Sen­tinel, Man­nis included some com­ments from Hon­o­rAir par­tic­i­pants that he also shared with us dur­ing the program.

John Edds said, “The day was emo­tional, espe­cially the arrival in Wash­ing­ton and back in Knoxville. When I came home from the war, there was no fan­fare. I had to hitch­hike home to Clai­borne County, so this home­com­ing recep­tion meant so much.”

Ray­mond Shirley wrote, “The wel­come await­ing us upon our return to Knoxville moved me to tears. When I was dis­charged from the Navy, I was given a bus ticket home to Sheffield, Ala. I arrived unnoticed.”

Bernie Shorr said, “After 68 years, I now real­ize that the Amer­i­can pub­lic really does appre­ci­ate what we did.”

There were Hon­o­rAir alums in the audi­ence to hear Man­nis speak. He was gra­cious and hum­ble in his remarks, say­ing “Thank you for your gift to all of us. That gift is the Amer­i­can way of life.”

The AMVETS Rid­ers were there too. This patri­otic group of motor­cy­cle rid­ers stood qui­etly in the back­ground – not part of the offi­cial agenda, although their pres­ence was felt. Fredda Tem­ples sang “Amer­ica the Beau­ti­ful” and “Some­where over the Rain­bow.” The Vol­un­teer State Vet­er­ans Honor Guard pre­sented the col­ors and sounded the vol­ley. Retired Mas­ter Sergeant Mau­rice Parks, USMC, played a haunt­ing and elo­quent ren­di­tion of taps.

Accord­ing to the offi­cial Web site of the state of Ten­nessee, the Vol­un­teer State nick­name comes from the record num­ber of vol­un­teers the state pro­vided dur­ing both the War of 1812 and the Mex­i­can War. Specif­i­cally, the name hon­ors the brav­ery of the sol­diers from Ten­nessee who served under Gen­eral Andrew Jack­son in the Bat­tle of New Orleans, a U.S. vic­tory dur­ing the War of 1812. Yes, even before foot­ball, Ten­nessee had its share of “Vol­un­teers,” will­ing to serve and die for our country.

Retired Army Major Larry Moore fought with the 173^rd Air­borne in Viet­nam. He was at the Novem­ber 11 cer­e­mony, where he was proudly wear­ing his uni­form and brag­ging that one grand­son was in the Coast Guard and another was an Army Ranger. Ser­vice is a fam­ily tra­di­tion for Moore and so many East Tennesseans.

My friend, Major Wiley Ham­mer of the HHT 3/278^th Armored Cal­vary Reg­i­ment with the Army National Guard, is about to deploy for his third tour in Iraq. These are his words: “The man you share a laugh and drink with tonight will share your fox­hole next week. Let us not fal­ter, let us not fail.” This hol­i­day sea­son, let us not fail to thank the men and women who honor us with their patri­o­tism, their courage and their sacrifice.