We Should Be More Selective with Our Admiration.
© 2010, Vicki Hinze. All Rights Reserved.
We hear a lot about pop stars and golfers behaving badly. We hear a lot about icons in business or pop culture avenues. We hear a lot about people who aren’t admirable, but have done something titillating or scandalous or outrageous, or just plain nonsensical. But we speak too little, and hear too little of acts of courage. Of selfless acts of heroism.
Take for example, the case of Captain Ed Freeman. Better yet, imagine that you are one of those who did witness his courage...
The date is November 11, 1967. You are a nineteen-year-old kid, critically wounded and dying in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam at LZ (landing zone) X-ray. Your unit is outnumbered eight to one and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 yards away, that your CO has ordered the MedEvac helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you will not be getting out alive. Your family is halfway around the world, and you'll never see them again.
The world fades in and out, and you know this is the day. Imagine the helplessness, the hopelessness, imagine your mother’s face at being told you’re dead, your father’s huge shoulders shuddering. Imagine...
Machine guns fire all around, kicking up dust and dirt and over the sound you hear a faint thump, thump, thump--a helicopter.
Looking up, you see an inbound Huey. It has no MedEvac markings--can’t be real.
But it is real. It is real, and Captain Ed Freeman is coming in under enemy fire for you.
He's not in a MedEvac chopper, so coming isn’t his job. But he’d heard the radio call and decided to take on the risks to get you out anyway--even after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come.
Captain Ed Freeman drops in and sits there, taking on machine gun fire while you and two others are boarded, then the captain flies you up and out through the gunfire to doctors and nurses--to safety.
And Captain Freeman kept going back. Thirteen more trips, he made that day--doing that which was not his job. Taking risks he didn’t have to take, but because he did, men lived, enjoyed lives--they survived.
Thirteen more trips he made through enemy fire. Until all the wounded were out.
Until the mission was over, no one knew that Captain Ed Freeman had been hit four times in his legs and left arm.
Captain Freeman took twenty-nine men out of harm’s way and to a safe place for the medical care they needed. Without him, some would not have survived.
He received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day--years later, in 2001.
In 2008, he died in Boise, Idaho. God bless him and rest his soul.
We likely didn’t hear about Captain Freeman’s passing. In our culture, the news is flooded for days on overdosing or misbehaving celebrities, but few spare so much as a mention of courageous men who willingly sacrifice for others. Men like our captain. We’re poorer for it.
We should feel shame about that and change our ways. Oh, you and I can’t control what the media elects to cover--except by changing channels. But we can start with ourselves. We can raise the bar, so to speak. Elevate our standards.
We can choose to direct our admiration and express our respect for men like the captain.
In our jobs, in our lives, we can raise our own standards. Be more selective on what and whom we admire.
Worthy heroes are not in short supply. They abound still today. The change is in us, that we don’t notice them. Their honor is intact. It is ours that is lacking.
But today we can make different choices. We can choose to acknowledge the best in us and others. We can choose to raise our standards and give respect and admiration to those among us who impact positively the lives of others.
We can raise our standards. And in doing individually, we do so collectively.
Thank you Captain Freeman. For what you did for those twenty-nine and their families that day. For what you’ve done for the rest of us today.
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