To Die For - A Veterans Day Reflection
Sermon by Steve Edington
November 13, 2005
As I've shared with some of you, on every March 12th and October 21st-unless I'm in some other part of the country-I do a little pilgrimage to the Edson Cemetery in Lowell to visit Jack Kerouac's grave. March 12 is his birthday; October 21 is the day he died in 1969. A little odd, perhaps, but believe me, I'm not the only one. But when I went there this past October 21 I found myself focused more on the marker that is two burial plots to the left of Kerouac's. It may have been because I had this sermon in mind. The inscription on this particular gravesite reads: S. G. Sampatacacus. The 'S' stands for Sebastian. His date of birth is May 22, 1922. His date of death is March 2, 1944. Also on the inscription are the words: PFC 51 Station Hospital.
The shortened name for this young man from a Greek immigrant family was Sammy Sampas. He and Jack Kerouac were high school friends and soul mates. Much later in his life, Jack married Sammy's older sister, Stella Sampas-which is how Kerouac ended up being buried in the Sampas plot when he died at the too early age of 47.
In high school Jack Kerouac was a football and track star. His ticket out of Lowell, in fact, was a football scholarship to Columbia University, which landed him in New York; and then there was all that came after that. In Lowell Jack had his rough-and-tumble high school football team guy friends he liked to hang out with. But there was another side to him. There was an artistic, literary, poetic, and philosophical side to the young Kerouac for which he also needed an outlet. He found it with Sammy Sampas. He and Sammy and a few other liked minded Lowell High School souls formed a club. They called themselves "The Young Prometheans." You gotta love the name: The Young Prometheans. They would discuss art, and literature, and the great ideas of the day and of days past. They would compare their fledgling literary efforts, and speculate about how artistic souls like themselves might someday change the world that would soon be theirs. Thinking about it almost makes one want to be eighteen again-well almost, maybe.
Then a war came along-a war like the world had never seen to that point: World War II. Young Promethean Jack Kerouac made two runs with the US Merchant Marine in that war after being given a psychological discharge from the Navy. Young Promethean Sammy Sampas declared himself to be a conscientious objector, but still volunteered to serve in combat settings, which is how he came to be on Anzio Beach in late February of 1944 as a medic. There he was mortally wounded and died a few days later in a military hospital. He was 21 years old. That's the same age as my son is today-with his life of promise and hope ahead of him.
Kerouac went on to achieve literary fame. The tragic irony is that this fame brought out his self-destructive side that brought him to his early death. But he left his mark on the American literary landscape; and his star keeps getting even brighter more than 35 years after he died. And Sammy, who by most accounts had much of the same artistic and literary and intellectual resources as Kerouac never got his chance to shine like his fellow Young Promethean; he never got his chance to make good in America. That's what I mostly thought about this past October 21. What about Sammy? Maybe he too could have lit up a generation, and generations after that, with his literary and artistic abilities-as did his high school soul mate who lies buried just a few feet away from him. What if Sammy Sampas had gotten his chance, too?
Sebastian Sampatacacus died for his country-the country that his Greek immigrant parents adopted as their own. His name is on a War Memorial at another location in Lowell. Whatever kind of life he would have had was given up for a greater good.
I struggle to say those last few words: "given up for a greater good." I struggle hard, in fact. And yet I believe them. I am a child of the war in which Sammy served; as did my father and my uncle and countless others. Some of their names I know; most I do not. Whether they came home safely to live out their lives, or lost their lives on the cusp of adulthood, I firmly believe that I would not have lived out the life that has been mine for six decades now had the horrifying events in Europe in the late 1930s and early 40s been allowed to continue unchecked.
But my personal life is not the "greater good" to which I refer. I have a strong ego, but it's not that bloated. But I do believe there are times when the values, principles, and traditions of this nation-even acknowledging all the ways in which we fall tragically short of those values-as well as the safety and well-being of its citizens, call upon it to be defended by force. Very simply put, that's the criteria I see for taking a nation into war, and only doing so after all other possible means of achieving the same objectives have been exhausted. There are a myriad of ways to maintain and extend the values that represent the best of who we are as a nation, and to protect the lives of our citizens, well short of war. Going to war for such reasons is an absolute last resort.
To expand upon this point a bit I want to look at the years that immediately followed the Second World War. As some of you know, I recently put out a book in which I celebrate some of the lives and creative energies of those who constituted what passed as a counter-culture in America during the 1950s. I get a little sharp in my critique of that era in certain places. This was the era that was presided over by the man who also conducted the American and Allied effort in World War II-General, and then President, Dwight Eisenhower.
This morning, however, as I look back at that time from the events of the present, I want to give that man his much deserved due. Mr. Eisenhower served as President at a time when the nation's fear of communism was at its height and was being greatly exacerbated by the treachery of Senator Joseph McCarthy. And there were a number of potentially explosive situations the President had to confront-the closing of the Suez Canal, the defeat of the French in Vietnam, and the communist takeover of Hungary to name but three. Given the climate of fear we were under then- I remember "duck and cover" air raid drills when I was in grade school-Mr. Eisenhower could have very well played on that fear to send American troops into battle in any of those places, with far more justification, I might add, than the so-called rationales now offered for the morass we're in at the moment.
I certainly make no claim to know the workings of President Eisenhower's mind during the crises I just mentioned. But I think I've got a pretty good idea as to why no American troops were committed during these crises, and why, as a result, no American lives were lost. I'll bet it was because as a General in World War II Mr. Eisenhower knew, up close and personal, what it meant to ask someone to die for his country. He knew what it was like, in the hours before the D-Day invasion to walk among the ranks of those he was sending into battle, and look them in the eye, knowing that it was only a matter of hours or days before many of them would be dead. Such an experience as that would certainly give a President pause, I would think, before asking young soldiers for their supreme sacrifice. Mr. Eisenhower was the last President we've had who has known such an experience.
I cannot help but compare this experience of General and President Eisenhower to that of another American President who could not walk out the front door of his vacation residence to tell a mother why her son had to die in Iraq. And you can talk about Cindy Sheehan's motivations, and about whatever organizations she's working in concert with, but she's still framing the right and crucial question: Is this a conflict that warrants young men and women being asked to give up their lives for? Is there enough at stake here for us ask for such a thing?
Between what I've said from this pulpit, and some of my more public statements beyond this pulpit, I believe my feelings about this current war in which we're enmeshed are pretty well known. I continue to hold to them as strongly as ever, but I will not unduly belabor them today. While the President continues to cling to his rhetoric of "completing the mission" and "staying the course," the more recognized and realized challenge now-for those with eyes to see and ears to hear and minds to comprehend-is how to remove ourselves from this horribly tragic situation with minimal loss of life and limb, and leave behind some measure of stability in a country we needlessly invaded.
For today I'm going to heed the distinction made by Senator John Kerry between 'war' and 'warrior.' There's a part of me that resists the term "warrior" but I'll set that semantic issue aside. This weekend began with a holiday observance for those who had served their country in the military-both those who perished during their service and those who returned. It is right and good that we do this, for these persons-whatever the nature of their service and whatever the situation in which they served-have preserved the principle that there are values and ideals, along with the safety and well being of a citizenry, that are worth preserving and that transcend the needs and desires and aspirations of the self. The real tragedy of war, even greater than the loss of life it entails, is when that principle is misused or abused by those who take a nation into war, which is the real tragedy that I believe we're confronting right now.
Still, more than ever, we must honor the lives that have so recently been lost, and the lives that have been damaged-as well as the lives of the citizens of Iraq who probably still don't quite know what's hit them. We should honor these lives, first of all, for their intrinsic value, for their inherent worth and dignity; and we should honor them for all they meant and mean to those who knew and loved them. And if their sacrifice now and in days to come gives us the same kind of pause that I feel stayed the hand of a former President who could have taken us to war on more than one occasion but did not; and if their sacrifice serves at some time in the future to pull us back from the brink of another head-long rush into an ill-conceived conflict that we don't need to fight; then they will indeed have served their country all the more.
I don't feel the need to go much beyond this right now, other than to offer this closing thought. The final scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan is one that has stayed with me well beyond the story line and the depictions of the horrors of war. It takes place in the present day as an aging James Ryan returns to Omaha Beach and to the scene of the battles of his youth with his wife and children and grandchildren. He walks through the immense cemetery of Crosses and Stars of David, seeing acres and acres of the graves of young men who did not get to live the life he did. He turns to his wife and says, "Tell me I've lived a good life."
That one scene captures, as well as anything I know, and certainly well beyond anything I've had to say today, what it means to ask someone to die in the name of his or her country. It means they do not even get the chance to raise the question of whether or not they've lived a good, full, and complete life. It is in the silent presence of all those who were denied that chance that the elderly James Ryan says, "Tell me I've lived a good life." I think of that scene as I see the body count go by up a few more numbers each day or week-for each number represents yet another man or woman who, having lived good lives for the short time they had them, are still being denied the knowledge of how well those lives could have been lived in the fullness of their time.
So here we are, with the lives that continue to be given to us; and with all the opportunities that this Gift of Life holds for us. Part of living a good life includes finding and upholding that Blessed and Holy Spirit of Life that is within all of us. It means continuing-however discouraging the odds may seem at times-to make the blessings of life and the blessings of love and hope and peace and justice as available as you can for all the world's peoples. These are people as close as the person next to you and as far away as the far reaches of our fragile planet.
It was Mahatma Gandhi who once said: "Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it anyway." Whatever we each can do to inch us a little closer to the day when all the peoples of this earth can look back upon a life well lived-it is very important that we do it.
Stephen Edington
November 13, 2005
