Honor and Hope

What a splendiferous day yesterday. Went to lunch with two high-school friends and ran into several other folks I knew at Franke’s cafeteria in downtown Little Rock. We talked and talked over lunch, sometimes all three at once. I tried to listen, because they are both a lot smarter than I. That’s one of the best ways to learn, even better than staring into a cell phone.

Anyway, took a “road trip” later with another friend. It was actually a “bidness trip” to a town in the Arkansas Delta with millions of dollars in needs and no resources with which to address the needs. Yes, there are a number of those communities in our state. It would take the cost of one new aircraft carrier to fix them and those in our neighboring states. Yeah, I know. It ain’t gonna happen, even if we raised taxes on CEOs making a salary of $250 Million each year and kids inheriting over half a trillion. The “right people” don’t make money curing misery.

After visiting with a very knowledgeable city council and attempting to answer some sincere and intelligent questions, another old friend walked in. It was their City Attorney, one of the “Valley” men from Helena-West Helena, Arkansas.

My cup was running over.

A visitor in the crowd was a young woman with a great interest in her community. It’s sometimes heartbreaking to see young people wanting to stay in, or return to, a hometown that has been shunned by both recent history and good fortune. The young one asked if it would be legally permissible to erect a monument to the veterans from the community.

I thought, “As long as you don’t list any that were shot down while flying an aircraft in the service of their country and spent years being tortured in a prisoner-of-war camp.” But, back to the meeting.

There is an old economic term, probably obsolete due to the “Retail Apocalypse,” known as “location quotient.” It calculates whether a defined region is employing enough workers in each economic sector as put up against a national economy. It was used by urban planners and others to quantify the status, uniqueness, or shortcomings of an area compared to national averages.

I always wonder, when I leave one of these communities, how many Einsteins, Mozarts, Darwins, Newtons, Armstrongs, Hurstons, Curies, Obamas, Salks, Carnegies, Winfreys, Angelous, and the like we leave languishing in the Arkansas Delta, and the poverty pockets of other states, while we heap tons of attention and coverage to the Kardashians and Manhattan White Trash of our nation. It is quite a sobering thought.

For the veterans’ memorial, I told the young lady, when she asked if they should build it, “I’d vote for it.” What I didn’t tell her was that within walking distance of where we were, there was the grave of a brave man who fell standing with Hal Moore in the Ia Drang Valley. Should there be a local memorial to men like him?

I thought, “Build it? Yes, yes you should. Yes. Honor those who wore The Uniform, lest they think their people doesn’t love them or appreciate their service.” Any point of pride in a community is a brick in the foundation of success.

Love and honor your people?. Hell yes. Maybe, just maybe, the son or daughter of one will reach the status of a Martin Luther King, Jr.