Why We Care About Safety

Here at the Old Place we look out for each other.  One morning I was taking my walk around the lake when I noticed Ms. Edith sitting on her back porch with a stranger.  It was a young man; his head was bent over, he had a cup of coffee in his hands and he was crying.  Edith got up patted his back and walked over to me.  The fella had recently lost his young bride to an act of violence leaving him a widower at 28 and his 7 year old daughter Teresa motherless.  All of a sudden all my problems seemed like Disney World.  As I began to pray with them the names Edith and Teresa kept appearing in my head, and I wondered what God was trying to tell me.  I had been reading recently about a rather unique saint, a Prussian born Jew and former atheist named Edith Stein.  Moved by the tragedies of World War I, Edith became a nursing assistant in a hospital.  Drawn to the Catholic faith, she was admitted as a Discalced Carmelite nun taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  Eight years later she was martyred in a Nazi gas chamber.  God had chosen that moment of tragedy to show me again why safety is a ministry.

Of course safety is also the law.  The philosopher Aristotle said that, “Law is reason free from passion.”  Does that mean that law is sufficient reason on its own to be safe?  I believe rational arguments and inferences alone do not give us trustworthy knowledge.  Safety is about people.  Silly, emotional, passion filled children of God.

As I reflected on the young man’s pain, I remember St. Teresa saying that, “Our knowledge of someone else’s pain is direct knowledge.” Say what?  Well, we know other people have a mind like ours sure because we know that we think, feel, decide, suffer, rejoice and etc.  Think of Rene’ Descartes’ phrase, “Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am.”  We all have experiences influenced by the world outside our own bodies but what makes those experiences interchangeable between us?

In his 1995 Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II, now St. John Paul the Great clarified this when he wrote, “Recognizing the reality of a person as opposed to a mere human organism is as fundamental as recognizing the reality of being.”  In other words, recognize the soul in all persons.  So what’s it go to do with safety?

I must go back to St. Teresa for an answer.  The object of our awareness at first is awareness of a consciousness outside our-self, let’s say one that “appears” to be in pain.  When we allow this awareness to unfold to its fullness, we find ourselves actually aware of becoming of the other person, in a sense “remembering” or “recognizing” their pain as if it were a memory in our own personal experience.  We achieve what amounts to intimate knowledge of others, a caring that transcends any desire to merely prevent pain but to eliminate it all together.  The struggle for safety is a supreme act of virtue and as St. Thomas Aquinas said, “nothing, except sin, is contrary to an act of virtue.”

Sitting in a rocker at the Old Place, I am Col. Jim.

No Time For A Parade

All over the country there are parades this Memorial Day honoring our fallen heroes.  There are no parades up here at the Old Place, but there is plenty of time for reflection.  I’m reading a small blue binder.  The author paints a vision of a terrified young sailor standing on the smoking, listing deck of a US destroyer.  A Japanese torpedo has just blown off the stern taking 19 of his shipmates to their deaths and leaving the ship dead in the water in the middle of a major sea battle. I could almost smell the cordite and hear the explosions.  As I close the binder, I see a patch glued to the front of it depicting a young wild Indian shooting a bow and arrow.  The arrow is pointed down.  I like to believe that is because he is shooting at that Japanese submarine, the preferred prey of our WWII destroyers. That patch is the unit insignia of Destroyer Squadron 23, “The Little Beavers” activated on May 11, 1943.  Under the command of then Commodore Arleigh “31 Knot” Burke, DESRON 23 earned a Presidential Unit Citation fighting 22 engagements while destroying a Japanese cruiser, nine destroyers, one submarine, several smaller ships, and approximately 30 aircraft.  That young sailor was a small, “Foote Note,” if you will, to this story aboard the Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Foote, interestingly the same class as our own embattled USS Kidd.  Wilbur V. Rogers was not even old enough to drink when with seabag hoisted over his shoulder he gazed up the gang way toward the ship that would be his home for the next two years. There was nothing special about the young sailor from Jonesboro, Louisiana.  Rog served in the Main Battery Director targeting enemy aircraft with the deadly twin 44 mm cannons.  He told me once, “You could get those guns to fire together or alternate.  I never liked it when they fired together.  If I could get them firing alternately that meant there was always lead in the air!”  Rog ultimately told me about the Battle of Empress of Augusta Bay. “It was 3 O’Clock in the morning and we had just executed a hard left turn to come up on the starboard quarter of the USS Converse.  A minute later a Japanese torpedo struck us at an angle behind the aft 5 inch gun mount.  We were making 31-knots and immediately went dead in the water.  All we could do was watch as the stern section, with 19 of our shipmates, turned slowly and began to sink.”  The Foote was repaired and returned to the war ultimately taking part in siege of Okinawa.  So, what’s it got to do with safety?  Those of you who know the Old Col know I’m a bit of a submarine nut.  So one day my father-in-law introduces me to his best friend Wilbur Rogers, with Marathon Oil and a tin can sailor.  Needless to say we eyed each other with some suspicion.  As I got to know Mr. Rog and listened to his stories he gradually became the grandfather I never had.  He took me on personal guided tours using our USS Kidd as a substitute for his long gone Foote.  As Rog shared, his stories of his shipmates, their battles and their laughter came alive.  This is a very difficult story for me to end.  “We all get old if we live long enough,” Rog once said.  Well I guess that’s true.  Mr. Rog and his sweet bride Ona Vee have had to leave Baton Rouge for Shreveport to be closer to their daughter.  To say I will miss him is not enough.  My world will be just a bit dimmer without Rog around.  His life and his character are a brilliant and blinding devotion to his family, his friends and of course to our country. Sadly, there will be no parade for Mr. Rog, but I send him on his way with “Fair winds and following seas” Mr. Rog, you will be missed.  

Sitting in a rocker at the Old Place, 

I am Col. Jim.