The Black Ditch of Shame

It appears as though snowmageddon has passed and perhaps life can begin to return to some sense of normalcy. It is difficult when there is still about two feet of snow covering much of the city and substantial areas, including most of the national mall and memorial parks, have not been cleared! The metro is running again, however, and it appears that I will be able to continue to use it to get to work during rush hour and will not have to walk through the snow and slush again!

I did succeed in making it in to work all three days of the holiday weekend and was amazed to find how many people were coming to the park despite the weather and the snow covering most of it.! School season has officially begun. I saw soooo many school groups come through in the last three days, and I am given to understand that it is only going to continue to increase from here as we move into spring and the blooming of the cherry blossoms!

I was at FDR on Saturday and spent much of the day working to chip out and remove ice that had refrozen over the path during the previous night. I did have a few good moments of connection and interpretation with visitors though, despite the fact that 95% of the memorial was inaccessible due to snow! The most notable of these was a family of four (parents, their daughter, and her husband) who had recently moved to New York from South Africa. They had a great understanding and appreciation of American history, far more than most Americans, and were very interested in FDR and the park in general. I spent 45 minutes taking them through the memorial and setting the context for FDR, what happened during his 12 years in office, and the way he fit into the journey and development of the American idea. It was great for me to have the opportunity to give that long of a talk and to make the connections myself so that I could communicate them to someone else. Rather than simply disseminating information, I was able to paint a picture of something far bigger, grander, and more valuable than the man that was Franklin Roosevelt.

I then spent both Sunday and Monday at Vietnam. On Sunday we had seven volunteers so I had much less to do in terms of interacting with visitors, but used the opportunity to speak to the volunteers as well. Many of them are veterans themselves, who come here to DC from all over the country to give their weekends over to helping people understand the significance of the wall and what happened in Vietnam. There is something so much more significant and moving about a veteran showing visitors the 7 panels that represent the 3600 men who died during the ten months that he served in Vietnam and telling the stories of his friends and comrades that are forever immortalized as letters etched into polished granite alongside 58, 253 of their brothers and eight of their sisters. It is something that I can never hope to equal myself, having no such connection or personal understanding as these men do. But in watching and learning from them, I am not only better prepared to represent the memorial myself, but am moved to be a better man, one who has a greater understanding of the power of brotherhood and sacrifice, and a far more personal and significant meaning to the words "freedom" and "liberty."

Indeed, as I went back to wall on Monday morning I found that I was joined, not by another ranger and seven volunteers as I had been the day before, but rather by a single volunteer, a 78 year old woman who retired in 2000 and then joined the peace corps in 2002, spending two years in South Africa in her early seventies in order to help and better the lives of others, to give of herself that others might know and experience love and compassion. She has been coming to the wall for more than ten years and has a wonderful gift for helping people to find the names of loved ones that are etched in the granite wall. I too was given an opportunity to help in this task on several occasions. The one that remains fixed most prominently in my memory is of a woman who had come to the wall hoping to identify the name of the fallen spouse of a cousin who has never remarried and never been to the wall or seen her husband's name listed amongst the fallen. Knowing only a last name and a home of origin we found Howard R Cody on the very first panel, one of the first to die in a foreign land. I had the privilege of accompanying them to the wall, helping them locate the name, and then climbing up a ladder which I had brought with for that purpose (the first panel is 10' 3" tall so one needs a ladder to reach the higher lines of names) and taking a picture of the name as well as making a rubbing. As I returned to the ground i was met with tears and an embrace and told that the rubbing and picture would be framed and presented to widow and assured that I had helped to bring peace and healing nearly fifty years after Howard had been lost.

As I remained down at the vertex of the wall I spoke to many others, helped them to understand what they were seeing, and explained anything I could. Among those who I spoke to were three teenage girls who approached me to ask what the diamonds and crosses signify on the wall. In my answer I spoke of the reason why so few of those who were missing had ever returned and that led to further conversation as they asked why we were there in the first place. I soon found myself immersed in an explanation that took my back into WWII in order to set the context and help them to understand why 58, 261 American names are listed on a granite wall in Washington DC. In the course of the conversation I discovered that these girls had no idea what the Soviet Union was, and  little understanding of what the words "cold war" meant. But much more significant to me than their lack of knowledge was their curiosity and willingness to learn and to understand. I talked to them for more than half an hour, and the conversation only stopped because a chaperon came and said they had to keep moving.

These places are filled with deep meaning and significance and I have the opportunity to help teenage girls and South Africans gain a better understanding of why they have the freedom they do and what it really means, and to help an elderly widow in Mississippi find peace about a husband that was taken from her half a century ago in a foreign land for reasons she did not understand.

Five Miles Uphill Both Ways in the Snow...

One week ago I was sent home at 12:30 due to the impending snowpocalypse. I made it home safely, little suspecting that I would be homebound for the next week due to the snow! The snow hit hard and fast Friday and Saturday night and shut the city down in its entirety. Then on Tuesday the snow came again and added another foot to the two already on the ground. I could not get out of the house at all on Wednesday due to blizzard conditions. The metro was shut down and my truck was buried in snow. For six days I was in limbo, waiting for a phone call each night to tell me if I was going to work in the morning. Last night the call finally changed, telling me to report for work this morning.

So I headed out earlier than normal this morning in order to safely get on the metro and make it into work.  Things seemed promising when I arrived. There were not too many people on the platform, and there was a train scheduled to arrive in ten minutes. Problem was, when that train arrived it was so packed full of people that they were falling out when the door opened and it was physically impossible to fit anyone else inside! I waited for the next train, which came about 15 minutes later and looked exactly the same. So did the one after that. Normally the trains come every 3-4 minutes, but this morning, because of the snow, they were 15-20 minutes apart, and I was too far down the line and could not get on. So after nearly an hour of waiting on the platform I finally gave up and decided to walk to work. So I walked a little over five miles through snow, down streets because sidewalks were still buried, across much of the city of Washington DC in order to arrive at work once again!

Snow in the Capitol

So the forecast for this weekend has included snow all week but it kept ting pushed further and further back. It was supposed to snow last night so I awoke thinking I would find a winter wonderland outside the house. Instead I found no snow at all, so I thought the snow had passed us by. However, shortly after beginning my day at the WWII memorial I was greeted by the first soft feathery flakes falling to the earth. The snow continued unabated throughout the day and is still continuing to fall even as I type this message. It was a very cold and wet day, but was also absolutely beautiful and I greatly enjoyed it! I thought to stick my camera in my bag this morning and captured a few images of some of the more well known fixtures of the mall. I have a attached a few of those pictures. Look for more on facebook!

The Moments in Life

Life has certainly continued to be an adventure here in Washington DC! It is exciting to be posted at a different site each day so that I have a unique experience every time I go to work. Combined with the variety of people who are visiting, it is keeping life interesting and exciting! Here are a few highlights of the moments in life that I have experienced in the last week...

~After being on my feet and working at the Washington Monument for about seven hours we had a child decide to puke all over the end of the x-ray machine which meant the whole operation had to shut down for about a half hour in order to deal with the "bio-hazard." Luckily I did not have to clean it up! But I did get to smell the lovely fumes emitting from the security area after the event!

~When I was at WWII on Monday I encountered a mom out with her three kids, eight year old twins (a boy and girl) and a ten year old girl. They were looking at the bas-reliefs seen at the entry to the memorial when I walked up to them and engaged them in conversation. That contact ended up resulting in an hour and a half of going through and discussing the panels and the war with these three kids. It was very exciting because it was so different that what I am usually doing, and because they were so interested. Their grandfather had landed at Normandy and been shot through the hip during the fighting that ensued in the French countryside. We have a total of 24 bas-relief panels depicting different moments of the war, some of combat and others on the home front. I took them to the twelve on the north side, which depict events connected with the European theater and that is where we spent an hour and a half. One of the panels depicts the amphibious landing and Normandy and another several medics carrying a soldier on a stretcher. So I was very easily able to connect the panels to the story of their grandfather. It was a very special time.

~I also gave the MLK program at Lincoln again, this time to a group of about fifty. Though nowhere near the scale of what happened on MLK day it was still very moving to speak about such momentous events in that place. And this time the stereo worked so I got to hear Dr. King's voice rather than my own. There is such power in those words!

~Saturday was "pie day" so last Friday I successfully baked a crunch top apple pie and took it in to join the others in a celebration of sugar and unhealthiness. I think my final tally was eight slices of pie throughout the day! (they were all small, but that is still a ridiculous quantity of pie!)

~Yesterday I made two different trips into Virginia that resulted in a glass top coffee table, small card table that I can use for scrapbooking, games, etc. and a small dining room table and four chairs. I had to drive pretty far to pick them up, but I got all the tables for free. God is definitely providing for me in that way! I also gave blood at the red cross, which turned out to be quite a painful experience as the lady who actually took my blood did not do it correctly. But I was able to tangibly help by giving blood to help replace the stores that are being shipped to Haiti. 

So life continues to be filled with the unexpected, he miraculous, and special and unforgettable moments. It is such moments that make up the fabric of our lives. 

Honoring Dr. King's Dream

So today I was posted at the "triangle" for the first time. The triangle consists of the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Korean Veterans Memorial (the three form the shape of a triangle in case you were confused). I ended up not having any time to prepare for today so I went in blind this morning, not having any specific research or preparation done for these sites. I ended up being posted at Vietnam in the morning and then at Lincoln in the afternoon. When I arrived at Vietnam I met a guy who has been volunteering at the site for more than 17 years. He asked me if I was comfortable doing talks at the memorial and I told him that there was a lot I didn't know so anything he could share with me would be appreciated. That comment resulted in a two and a half hour tour and explanation of all sorts of topics related to the memorial, including the war itself, the story of the memorial and its construction, and personal anecdotes about many of the names on the wall including the name of an air force pilot who was listed as MIA but whose remains were later identified in the tomb of the unknown soldier. So now I know much much more about Vietnam than I did this morning!

I was supposed to be at Vietnam until 2:00 and move up to Lincoln at that point, but at about 12:10 the ranger in charge of operations at the triangle today came to me while I was eating lunch and asked me if I could do the 1:00 MLK presentation at Lincoln. Things had changed and some rangers had to be shifted so there was no one to cover the program at Lincoln. Keep in mind that I have never even worked at Lincoln and had had no time to prepare anything to do a talk about Lincoln and the memorial, much less a special talk about Martin Luther King Jr. Well I of course said yes and suddenly found myself faced with the prospect of trying to put together a program out of my head since I had no resources available and then going to give that program out in front of Lincoln in about half an hour while also finishing lunch.

When I went out to the front steps ten minutes before 1:00 I was greeted with a surprising sight. Typically programs I have been giving have been for audiences ranging from 2-10 people. It was immediately evident that this program was going to be very different. I found myself looking at a crowd of people covering the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spilling into the plaza below. As I walked out I was quickly approached by several people asking if I was going to be doing the one o'clock program and I realized that all of these people were waiting to hear the program that I was about to give. We typically do a short talk about the "I have a dream" speech and play a selection from the speech on the lower plaza of the Lincoln steps each day, but I had come up with an idea that was rather larger than the norm on account of it being the day that it was and once I saw the crowd that was gathered I decided that rather than doing the program on the lower level I would instead do it on the upper landing from the very same location that Dr. King delivered his speech 47 years ago. 

So I embraced the moment and essentially improvised a 15-20 minute talk with no notes to a crowd of more than 500 people gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I began with Jefferson and spoke of the ideals of freedom and equality that he has espoused and how they found voice in the Declaration of Independence. That led me into a discussion of Lincoln and his work to preserve these same values in which I quoted the Gettysburg Address on three different occasions and spoke about him setting events in motion that found greater fruition nearly 80 years later when Marian Anderson performed in concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in spite of a clearly prejudiced refusal of indoor venues due to the color of her skin. That led me to discuss the planned march on Washington in 1941 by A. Phillip Randolph and others that was canceled due to the intervention of FDR who asked them to stop the march and took action to create greater equality in the workplace. This action was son overshadowed by the US entrance into WWII and many young black men enlisted and served in the ranks of the US armed forces, finding equality amidst the horror of war. But upon returning to America these same men found that they would not be treated in the same fashion at home and rising discontent found a voice in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Sit-ins, and other planned action to fight for civil rights. This in turn led to a revival of the planned march on Washington, only this time the march would take place in late summer of 1963 and would be organized by all of the "big six" civil rights organizations and would culminate in a series of ten speeches delivered from the steps on the Lincoln Memorial, an icon to freedom and equality. 

Though each of the first nine speakers at this event were notable figures in the Civil Rights movement, it was the last speaker, a young minister coming from Montgomery, Alabama that was the focal point of the crowd. And true to expectation when he took his place at the podium Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr invoked the bible, Shakespeare, the Declaration of Independence, The Gettysburg address, and the song "my country tis of thee" as he spoke to a crowd of more than half a million listeners about his dream of equality and freedom, a dream that his four children would one day be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. 

After this setup I then told the gathered crowd that I was going to let Dr. King speak for himself and pressed the play button on the stereo to play a recording of Dr. King's speech in its entirety. Things were great for the first 20 seconds and then the audio cut out. It just stopped and I couldn't get it to come back on. So here I was, in front of all of these people and the speech wasn't going to play. I didn't know what to do. And then someone in the crowd produced a transcript of the speech, which I found in my hands and I suddenly knew exactly what I had to do. So I turned back to the crowd, apologized for the failure of technology, and declared that though I was certainly not Dr. King, I was going to do the best I could to capture the essence of his character as I read the words he spoke from that very spot on August 28, 1963. And I proceeded to deliver the speech in its entirely to a crowd of 500+ from the very spot that Dr. King had once uttered the very same words. 

It was one of the most powerful and moving experiences of my entire life. As I came to the closing words of the speech in which Dr. King quotes the old hymn declaring, "free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I am free at last" I was met with a roar of applause and nearly brought to tears as I realized that I had unwittingly just participated in something that transcended my position as a park guide in Washington DC, something that reflected the very core of who we have been created to be, of the better angels of our nature as Lincoln might have said. 

I spent the next twenty minutes talking to the crowd and then realized I was the only ranger on site which meant that I was responsible for the 2:00 talk about Lincoln, which I proceeded to also do on the fly, giving a 25 minute talk on Lincoln and the memorial to a crowd of more than fifty who followed me around inside the chamber. I repeated this talk at 4:00 as well. Quite the first day a the site!

After getting off the work two other rangers and I decided to walk to the Kennedy Center in order to attempt to attend a special concert by India Arie in celebration of Dr. King. We were actually not able to get inside the main auditorium, but were able to watch the event via video feed on a large screen in the lobby, and thus still participate to some degree. The reason we were unable to get inside is that when we were nearing the building just before six we were stopped outside so that President Obama could enter the building for a special surprise appearance and speech. So I got to listen to his speech while watching him on video in the room next door. Since we were outside the main auditorium we were among the first people to exit the building following the event and made it outside just before they temporarily shut the building down so that the presidential motorcade could exit the Kennedy Center and return the president to the White House. So I ended up standing on the sidewalk directly in front of the presidential motorcade as Obama and company passed in front of me. I was still in full uniform, which is significant because there are certain situations in which any unformed Park Ranger must stand at full attention and hold a full salute. These situations do not occur in most parks, but in Washington DC things are a little different. Once such situation is when the president of the United States is passing. So I stood at full and proper salute, in uniform, as President Obama passed in front of me. 

It was a day to remember.