Simple patriotic act reflects commitment to service

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Edward Keegan
  • 18th Communications Squadron commander
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan (AFPN) --  Much is made in the press and popular culture about the generation that is currently coming of age to join the military -- 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 which is not immediately gratifying to them is not noticed or purposefully ignored.

Much is also made of the older generation. They are the venerable ones, those who served a higher cause, and made America the embodiment of an ideal. That generation includes my father-in-law, who recently visited us here on Okinawa, his first return here since passing through in 1965 on his way back to the United States from Vietnam.

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. The salute he receives at the gate as a retired lieutenant colonel had become perfunctory, done so often for so long that he doesn't even seem to notice any more that he returns the gate guard's salute.

On a recent weekend, young met old at Kadena's Gate Two. A young airman, pulling his latest security forces augmentation tour, stepped up to the car when my wife and her parents arrived at the gate. Then something unexpected happened. Rather than performing the expected rote courtesies, the airman bent down, looked past my wife to her father, and 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."