A Few Words: A Message from Dean Wishon

On this Veteran’s Day my thoughts turn to a few words of esteemed American war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, in a report on the WWII campaign in North Africa that he filed in 1943.  In his report, Pyle describes a long ribbon-like path stretching out for several miles beyond his station on a war-ravaged Tunisian hillside.  He writes:

I wish you could see just one of the ineradicable pictures I have in my mind today.  All along the length of this ribbon there is now a thin line of [soldiers]. For four days and nights they have fought hard, eaten little, washed none, and slept hardly at all. Their nights have been violent with attack, fright, butchery, and their days sleepless and miserable with the crash of artillery.  There is an agony in your heart and you almost feel ashamed to look at them. They are just [troops] from Broadway and Main Street, but you wouldn't remember them. They are too far away now. They are too tired. Their world can never be known to you, but if you could see them just once, just for an instant, you would know that no matter how hard people work back home they are not keeping pace with these [American warriors] in Tunisia.

Just a little perspective on a fall day here in the valley; something to seal away in the back of one’s mind to be resurrected now and then when one talks about imparting to our students the importance of notions such as citizenship, service, ethical reasoning, regard for others, civic engagement, sustainability of selves, and a handful of other precious ideals and freedoms.  One can scarcely read Pyle’s words without sensing that a debt is owed—a debt of gratitude for the service rendered by every American service man and woman past and present.  In addition to words of thanks to our colleagues and friends serving in the military, our gratitude may be best expressed by rededicating ourselves to the privilege of animating in others the will to sustain humankind’s noblest ideals—ideals which each of our service men and women have sworn an oath to preserve and protect, and for which many have made indelible sacrifice.

Best to you all today,

Phil