THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606090051
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
LENGTH: 48 lines
The geraniums are blooming large, and the small purple, pink, red and white impatiens turn their faces to the evening cool on my porch.
From my vantage point, I watch as couples stroll hand-in-hand down the quiet street in downtown Manteo. They talk quietly, smiling at each other the familiar way that lovers do, when something grabs their attention.
The marble gray monument, awash in floodlights, beckons their eyes. They stand for a while, taking time to read the names of the young men from Dare County who died in the wars of this century. Their eyes fix like sharpshooters on the inscriptions.
After a few moments, they walk on, back to talk about what they will do tomorrow, what the kids are doing, how the vacation has gone too quickly.
It happens like clockwork, countless times each day.
I've thought a lot about the names on that wall in recent days, how duty called them to places like the Argonne Forest and Corregidor, Inchon or Da Nang, away from girlfriends and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers.
How in another time, those fresh-faced young men walked the same quiet streets of Dare County, holding hands with the girls they loved, talking about spring dances and sparkling diamonds, and simple dreams of home and heart.
Those young couples were not so different from those who leisurely stroll along Sir Walter Raleigh Street today. Except that those young men of years ago would go off to those faraway places with strange-sounding names, never to return, dying with their dreams in bloody fields of dreaded horror.
We live in a time, thankfully, when there are no major conflicts taking young men and women marching off to war. We live in an age not so much of swords, but of plowshares. Little boys can play baseball without fear that one day men in uniforms will knock on their door and tell Mommy that Daddy isn't coming home.
Mothers and fathers by the dozen will not have to bear the flag-draped coffins of their sons and daughters to a final resting place, flinch at the crackle of gunfire in graveside salutes, or hear the sorrowful tones of taps.
And at least for the moment, though American troops are on guard throughout the world, we do not have to consider whether it is right or wrong to fight a war in places with names we have never heard.
It is because of the names on the wall in a little island town that we sleep in peace tonight. It is because of them that excited schoolchildren fresh out of school can surf and skateboard and steal second base without a single thought of war.
Their heads should be full of visions of lemonade and ice cream and kites flying in the cool summer breeze. Children should not have to think of wars, or the names on a stone wall. by CNB