My Take on The Fort Hood Memorial Service (Cassie Writes an Op Ed)
Posted by Cassie Frequelz in Current Events, Politics, President Obama, Relaxed Politics
The United States has been at war in Afghanistan since the fall of my second grade year, and in Iraq for half of the years I have been in school. In all that time, and in all of the years that we watched Channel One News in the mornings, we never saw a casket, never heard about the war dead or the loss of limbs, and only heard about veterans one day a year.
That changed last Tuesday.
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all been President of the United States during my schooling, and all three have addressed the nation’s students in the first weeks of school. Clips of these addresses were shown on Channel One, or the existence of the speeches was mentioned in news stories. There was never any controversy.
That changed this September.
This year, we were warned that the President was scheduled to speak to students across the nation, and the news media was full of dire predictions of this unprecedented address. We were originally asked to have our parents sign a form saying that we could listen to the fifteen minute national pep rally for paying attention and focusing on our studies, with the option of spending that time in another room. Then the speech was canceled except in U.S. government classes. Our infantile minds were apparently not prepared to absorb such concepts as hard work and setting goals.
image via Fort Hood Sentinel
And yet, we were apparently sufficiently mature to watch last week’s memorial service from Fort Hood. Without warning and without parental permission, this solemn service and the words of the President and several reverends were shown school-wide, in class.
Tuesday’s memorial honored the fallen soldiers who died here in Texas, those killed by one of their own, a member of the Fort Hood family. Perhaps seeing the memorial was appropriate, but not without any prior indication that it would be shown.
In many ways I am different from my classmates, but I was far more prepared for hearing the President’s scholastic encouragement than for seeing the empty boots of fallen soldiers and hearing the roll-call and the sound of taps. My brother wears the same uniform as the grieving soldiers, and he has served at Fort Hood. I lived with him at Fort Hood during one of his trainings for his career as an army truck mechanic. The buildings in the background of the live shots were familiar to me, and I imagined that afternoon what it would be like to attend a memorial for my own brother. I was distraught Tuesday and am still emotional as I think back. I hope he remains alive well into his 90s, and I am more than resigned to grieve for him when I reach ninety myself.
- Fellow Soldiers, family and guests take a moment of silence during a memorial service for 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division Soldiers: Spcs. Jake Velloza, Jeremiah McCleery, and Shawn Sykes, June 18, at Fort Hood’s 1st Cavalry Division Memorial Chapel. Sgt. Karl Williams, 3rd BCT, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs
Most of Fort Hood’s dead are honored with ceremonies similar to the service last week. The rituals are the same though the crowds are much smaller. The news doesn’t tell us about the 70 Fort Hood soldiers who committed suicide in the first half of 2009. We have not seen military funerals for any of the 5000 military service members killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan since I learned to write my name in cursive. Our morning announcements don’t indicate the number of those forever wounded in body or soul in that time. And we have certainly seen no mention of Afghan or Iraqi civilians killed by our military since my adult teeth started coming in.
Funerals and memorial services can be very traumatic, and the sight of empty combat boots is intended to sadden us. Many of my classmates have never been to a funeral, and fewer still have family members serving in the armed forces. Almost none have a family member deployed in a war zone. Our first military funeral should not have come unannounced and unanticipated.
image via CBC
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Thank you Cassie.
Very thoughtful and reasoned for the emotions you are experiencing. And you are so correct in your judgment. To put such a service unannounced on the school teevee channel without warning or options to go to another room is wrong and I suspect it was damaging to some students. Those who don’t have any idea what this really means to a person or family affected by the wars may have paid little heed to what was being shown, and such ambivalence and unconcern would have been hard for those who did pay attention and were emotionally tied to the service. This kind of thing isn’t totally bad for students to watch, war is ugly and unnecessary war is uglier still. But to not prepare the students for the program and service does little to bring about education and concern and respect.
I hope this post gives the school administration pause to think of their responsibility to their students and their families.
Thanks again for your thoughts so carefully and eloquently written down for us to read and on which we may contemplate.
And I’m sorry you had to be subjected to such a heart-breaking event by such willfully ignorant and thoughtless school administrators.
The decision to show the memorial service is weird, given the kerfuffle over the Obama talk in September. I wonder who decided that? Someone who didn’t think things through. Sadly I think school administrators make knee jerk decisions – blowing with whatever is contained in the current political wind – especially around here.
@ gnome de plume:
*Political wind* indeed. Texas is conservative, so the wind would blow from that direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if the school administrators didn’t even think anything about it – it was something they wanted to see and could not imagine it wouldn’t want to be seen by their students.
There should be, I think, a serious look into who made this decision and if any protocol is established and was it followed.
I would be interested in knowing the students’ reactions to having to watch the memorial service. Just curious. So I guess I’m just asking a rhetorical question for which I don’t need an answer.
Excellent post. Thanks Cassie.
Excellent post, Cassie. It seems to me that school systems/administrators don’t think through what they do, although they do immediately bow to the wishes of the vocal minority.
One quibble…the war started in 2001. Wouldn’t that put you in 4th grade?
Oh no! I need to go to 1st or 2nd grade to learn to subtract!
Thanks, Cassie. An excellent explanation of your perspective.
Somehow it doesn’t make sense that the one everyone was so afraid of in September was an afterthought in November. I doubt that the administrators even connected the two. Smart, you, did.
@ freckles cassie:
No, I just think in terms of school years and know that the class that is graduating this year was in 4th grade when 9/11 happened. It’s the teacher brain.
No demotion for you, just 10 lashes with a wet eraser.
I’m just now catching up to this, don’t know if you’ll ever read my reply.
Good post, Cassie.
Really, good post.
You draw comparisons amongst things that show and prove a hypocrisy.
And you do it well.
Nurture that ability to SEE it, and TALK about it, and use your ability to do so perhaps, in the future, to affect social change.
If nothing else, your own work will sustain YOUR soul, and keep you in a place that makes you feel good about yourself.
18, or 80, that’s something us adults are always seeking. Though few will admit it.
A place, a way, a life, an action, a reason to be.
Adults seek this, all our lives. I have. Still am.
Welcome to a big, rich, full life of seeking.
Not to sound trite, but it’s the seeking that brings the meaning to our souls, to our lives.
Many adults don’t get THAT, for sure. And too many lose sight of the seeking as they grow older.
You, you already know it. The secret’s in the seek!
You go, guhrl.