Simple patriotic act reflects commitment to service

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Edward Keegan
  • 18th Communications Squadron commander
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  Much is made in the press and popular culture about the generation that is coming of age for military service -- the generation that will replace us as the future of the Air Force.

The recurring theme is that they are not the “service” type, that their horizons are viewed through a lens of self-absorption, and that those things not immediately gratifying to them are not noticed or are ignored.

Much is also made of the older generation. They are the venerable ones, those who served a higher cause and made America more than a country -- they made America the embodiment of an ideal.

That generation includes my father-in-law, who recently returned to the United States after visiting us here on Okinawa. It was his first visit here since he was returning to the United States from Vietnam in 1965.

He has long since retired from the Air Force, grown his remaining hair a little longer, and taken on full time duties as a grandpa. Even the salute he gives at the gate as a retired lieutenant colonel had become perfunctory -- done so often that he does not seem to notice that he returns the gate guard’s salute any more.

On a recent weekend, young met old at Kadena’s Gate Two. A young airman, pulling his latest in an unknown number of security forces augmentation tours, stepped up to the car when my wife and her parents arrived at the gate. But then something unexpected happened. Rather than the expected rote courtesies, the airman instead bent down and, looking past my wife to her father, said, “Thank you for serving, sir.”

In my entire career, I have never been so proud of anyone.

With that deceptively simple act, the young airman reminded a retired lieutenant colonel, and this active-duty lieutenant colonel, exactly what true service is about.

It is not about rank or position, and it is more than earning a paycheck. It is about a set of ideals that transcend time, that say we will do whatever is required to keep our country safe, just as those who came before us did.

That airman proved that the thread that binds the Air Force still exists across all the generations. He showed that our Air Force is, and will remain, in good hands, and America’s greatest generation is not in the past, but is still to come. On behalf of the entire Air Force, I want to say to that young airman, “Thank you for serving, sir.”