What about Mike?

The strangest things can take you back, can’t they. A couple of weeks ago I was watching Boyer Valley get beaten by the West Harrison Hawkeyes and something sent me back to L.A.

I was doing my best to ignore the perennial emotional melodramas that cheerleaders seem to have to go through. It was just to hard to concentrate to much on the game since we were down by twenty points. So of all things I started noticing the back of some kid’s head.

Mind you, I’m not in the habit of looking at the backs of kids’ heads. It was a basketball player with a shaved head. It reminded me of Mike’s head.

Mike Merrill was an incredibly tall kid with a shaved head like this West Harrison kid, only taller. He had an Adam’s apple and a bit of a slouch so that he kind of reminded you of one of those cartoon vultures in Disney movies. In spite of that, he wasn’t a scrawny kid. Mike was pre-enlisted to become a Marine.

Mike’s Dad was in the Corps. Mike’s Grandpa served in Korea. Nobody could remember his first name, he was known only as “Sarge.” Sarge came to all of Mike’s Football games . We didn’t have a regulation length field, so we played our games on Saturday afternoons at the Baptist high school. Sarge sat in the hot California sun in his lawn chair with a beach umbrella to protect his white flat-top.

Sarge came to junior high games too since Mike’s little sister was a cheerleader. Friday evenings when the wind blew through the foothills it could make you shiver. Sarge would remind us that we didn’t know real cold if we didn’t fight in Korea. I knew as a history teacher that he knew what he was talking about. Each winter campaign from 1950-53 rivaled WWII’s Battle of the Bulge for the brutal cold and grueling storms.

My Dad was fortunate. When he was in the Marines during the Korean War, he was stationed on an air craft carrier in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His dad was too old for active service during WWII, so he worked in the aircraft factories outside of Detroit. My Mom’s Dad served in the Navy in the Aleutian Islands. I, thank God was born during Vietnam, rather than 17 years earlier.

Military service never really occurred to me. Most of my generation was expected to go from high school to college, even if it was a two year college, it was an unspoken rule, an assumed expectation. No doubt just as military service, at least was National Guard service was an unspoken expectation of the generations before mine.

I’d seen several student enter the Army or Marine Corps before Mike Merrill. Usually they came back to Homecoming different, more respectful, more responsible, more poised, men. Andrew Beyang was a Malaysian-American student who became a Ranger in the First Airborne. He came back to my U.S. History class with a recruiting sergeant to talk about basic training. They actually showed video footage of soldiers throwing up after a poison gas endurance test. What a way to win over volunteers.

Last summer I received an email from a college classmate in Nebraska. Tom was joining the reserves. He said that after 9/11 he felt like he had to do something. He had always been into Civil War reenactment, so I figured he was in good enough shape to hack it. The last time I’d seen him he was working on his Master’s and he was an inspiring teacher , so I figure they’ll make him an officer. Still, it seemed odd to me.

“You’re 32 years old,” I thought, “you have two little kids at home. Are you nuts? A weekend-a-month, a month-a-year? Aren’t you spread thin enough between Church and school and coaching and reenactments? Besides, we’re at war, sort of, with these weird terrorists, you could, well, die.”

But I didn’t tell him that. I told him I admired him. I thanked him for service and sacrifice and I meant it, but I can’t help paying closer attention to the news when the latest troop mobilizations are announced. He’s a dear friend. How can I not worry.

The last I’d heard Mike Merrill was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. But where are Justin, Andrew, Rick, and any of the other kids I’ve taught over the years? Who says Okinawa is safe, just because it’s not in the Persian Gulf? It’s probably less than 600 miles from Soul, Korea.

When Tom and I were in elementary school we were scared to death of a nuclear war. I thought that fear had died along with the Soviet Union. Now, it seems that North Korea may have missiles capable of targeting the western United States.

As a high school student in the eighties I naively longed for the controversy of the sixties and seventies, but by college I was glad that I wasn’t faced with having to fight or take a stand in opposition to the Vietnam War. I’m still amazed at what good friends my uncles are. One who was a medic in Vietnam and one who fled to Canada.

I don’t doubt that Saddam Hussein is a genuine threat and I certainly don’t approve of dictatorships, but I’m not convinced that some of our current President’s rhetoric hasn’t been reckless. I think that positive, proactive engagement is always more productive than broad threats and angry assertions. And we may not be hypocritical imperialists like so many pacifists accused us of being during Vietnam, but I can sure see how half the Arab world might see us that way, while we support one nation’s dictator while staging a “pre-emptive” war to oust another.

So here we are, U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix reports to the U.N. Security Council this Monday, Jan. 27. Many analysts, pundits, and experts expect that to be when President Bush makes the decision of Mike Merrill’s life. At least 60 to 250,000 American troops, Men, Women, boys and girls may be about to go to war. The first Gulf War took place in February too.

I think we should support our troops and pray for them like we did during the first Gulf War. Vietnam Vets didn’t deserve all of the hatred and anger unleashed on them upon their return home. But war isn’t something we should be enthusiastic about and we shouldn’t support our political leaders blindly.

All I know is, I wish all that Mike Merrill had to worry about was still where to take his cheerleader girlfriend for a date after the game.