The Praying Veteran

Tonight's blog is about a man I have come to admire more than any of the other veterans I have worked with. His story is not a happy one, and yet this gentleman goes through life with a smile in his face and a twinkle of good humor in his eye. 

Cliff is a nickname, but it is all I truly know him by. It is the only one he needs. He was one of thousands who answered the call to go to Vietnam by draft, rather than volunteer. He wears his entire military experience proudly on a single black ballcap, embroidered in some places with unit patches, and decorated with shiny pins in others. On one car ride I point to a big red one;

"You were in the Big Red One?" I exclaim, knowing the unit's celebrated battle history. He turns his worn, leathery face to me and smiles. 

"Well, we were assigned to them for the war, but those bastards kept trying to get me killed!" 

Cliff was an army field medic in Veitnam. He signed up for a position he thought might be safer, but ended up in harm's way more often than not. Still, he insists (much like another Veteran I know and respect) that America's highways are far deadlier than the war ever was. He is fond of telling a "war story" in which a woman he was riding shotgun with in 1971 (pre seat belts) decided to throw the car in reverse on a busy freeway when she missed her exit. 

"I tell you what I told her," Cliff says as he buckles his safety belt. "Please don't kill me, I'm a Vietnam veteran. People already aren't nice to me!" 

He says something like this to me every time we get into the car and he is one of my passengers before we ever set out. It makes me laugh every time, and I do find myself being extra careful. 

Cliff has good humor over not only the danger of the road, but also something I can't stand - the way our Vietnam veterans were treated when they returned home. Cliff is a person with a rare gift to make light of something serious, but still uphold the respect the subject deserves. He is a person who has been trampled on and treated unfairly, and only now as a senior citizen does he claim to make enough enough to pay all his bills and still have money left over. He has two bachelors and two masters degrees, about half of which his service in the military helped pay for - and he jokingly insists the degrees are finally paying off for him. 

Cliff tells me he had an ex-wife who was never satisfied with what he could provide her no matter how hard he worked. In the end, she divorced him in the early 1990's and took the kids with her out of his life. Somehow she was able to keep the kids from seeing him when he fell into unemployment and was unable to pay child support. His daughter and son attempted to reconnect with him around 2003, and he tells a story of two young adults who were just as difficult to please as their mother. Earlier this year the son told him they never want to hear from him again. 

I don't know what would ever lead a child to say such a thing to a parent, and mean it, but I believe Cliff when he says their mother always painted him in a bad light and that all three people have material greedy souls. Sometimes people can end up that way. 

Cliff has much he could be depressed about. He's turning 70 soon and he's alone. He's lost his family, has few friends except for the other veterans in the non profit, and could be very lonely. Yet before each day of work he prays and believes God will provide him the best, and take care of him. He prays for the others, and watches over them with father-like interest. He never stops smiling, and a twinkle is always in his eye.

My readers will have all different views on faith and spirituality, and I do not write to promote any one belief here. But this man does have something we all long for, that life can throw whatever cruel intentions it may have for him and he will still be happy just to be alive and allowed to love others. Call it faith, call it optimism, call it the Holy Spirit - or call it a man who simply decided life was worth living no matter the darkness - when you look at someone like Cliff, you may discover something about how to live your own life with a smile too. 

Cliff (right) trades memories of Vietnam with another veteran. Glen was a Door gunner on helicopters - a position who's life expectancy in 1967 was 3 minutes after first contact with the enemy.