Veterans Day, Remembrance Day, Armistice Day - always remember and never forget

The poppies at Flanders Fields, a large military cemetery in Belgium. (Image copied, without permission, from dailyhive.com)

November 11 is a holiday to remember the cessation of hostilities in World War I, which happened 99 years ago. The guns went silent at the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month of 1918.

For 20 years, WWI was known as The Great War, and was nicknamed The War to End All Wars. That didn't work, did it?

In 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11 Armistice Day, to commemorate the end of WWI. In 1954, it was renamed Veterans Day.

Also in 1919, Great Britain's King George V declared November 11 Armistice Day. In 1931, in Canada, the holiday was renamed Remembrance Day, and is celebrated as such in all countries of the Commonwealth of Nations (what's left of the former British Empire).

Most people, including me, confuse the meanings behind Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Veterans Day is to recognize and honor all of those who have served in the military. Memorial Day is to remember and honor those who died while in military service. (Thanks to Wikipedia for making that distinction.)

Personally, I think we should honor all of them, all of the time.
Today, I recognize and honor the following:

• COL Edwin French, USAAF, killed 1946 in occupied Japan.
• SGT Donald McIlveen, Royal Canadian Army, who fought in Italy in 1944-1945 and came home to live a long and happy life.

... all of my friends who fought in Vietnam, too many to name ...

... and these members of the next generation, who either recently served or are still serving:

• Jason Depew
• Jennifer Depew
• Robyn Chalupa
• Todd Williamson
• Alisha McKee
• Van James Walther Jr
• Chris Barela
• Casey Barnum
• Nathan Murphy
• Heather Hansen's husband, Joshua Hansen 
• Dustin A Giesick
• Don Bugg
• Peter Boone
• Nikki Yaste and her husband, Alex Yaste
• Tom LeNeave
• Ruth Ann LeNeave

... and any friends that I forgot to list.

Mark Miller: Another Life Well Lived

Local builder, artisan, and businessman Mark Miller passed away July 5, 2012, of a heart attack. The heart attack was a surprise to everyone, and an autopsy revealed that Mark was such a superfit athlete that he had an enlarged heart. In the words of his 10-year-old daughter, the muscles of Mark's heart had grown so big that the nerves couldn't keep up with them. When the heart attack hit, he was relaxing on the couch reading a book, after having spent an enjoyable morning with his girls.

This strong and gentle man had enjoyed the perfect life with his sweet wife and young daughter, and although his passing was a time of sadness, it was also a time of comfort and peace – and cheer, actually. He had prepared well for the eventuality of his death, and he and his family knew that death is just a transition between two phases of living, and that they will be reunited one day. Until that day, Mark will live on through his legacy: the things he made with his hands, the property he beautified for his family, the hundreds of young people he coached in cross country, and the friends and other people he touched in his lifetime.

Mark Miller, August 26, 1959 - July 5, 2012

Mark's family hosted a Celebration of Mark's Life on their beautiful property yesterday. It would have been Mark's 53rd birthday. I was invited to speak at the celebration. There was no eulogy or sermon, only people from the different circles Mark had lived in, telling about the influence Mark had had on them. Here's what I said:


I’m speaking for all the parents of all the kids that Mark and Kathy ever coached. Three of our children ran XC at Loveland HS, and so we got to know Mark and Kathy very well: we did lots of pasta dinners, killer hikes, Rattlesnake runs, and Fall River Road runs.

Mark and Kathy have been a team for as long as I can remember, but Kathy asked me to concentrate on Mark in my remarks. I don’t know if I can separate the influence of the one from the other, but I do know that Jason, Kellie and Lori, especially Kellie, thought the world of Mark. If he had asked Kellie to run across Lake Loveland without getting her ankles wet, she would have done it for him. 

They called him their coach, but Mark was a masterful teacher. By example and by precept, he taught our kids a lot, about running – about life – and about believing in something. We have observed over the years that it takes a special breed of kid to be an XC runner: with only a few exceptions, it's the ones who are serious, studious, smart, and more importantly, morally upright – "righteous" might be a better word. Mark was always careful to nurture and encourage those character traits, and the kids responded to that nurturing. As a result, in addition to Molly, he has a posterity that numbers in the hundreds. 

If you count all of the runners like Kellie, then the 128th Psalm finds real fulfillment in Mark's life: 

1      Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; 
            that walketh in his ways. 
2      For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands: 
            happy shalt thou be, 
            and it shall be well with thee. 
3      Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine 
            by the sides of thine house: 
            thy children like olive plants 
            round about thy table. 
4      Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the LORD. 
5      The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: 
            and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem 
            all the days of thy life. 
6      Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, 
            and peace upon Israel. 

Kathy, thanks for everything you and Mark have done for our children. May God give you peace.

Obama Needs to be "Wise as Serpents, and Harmless as Doves"

Yesterday we saw Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services, step aside because he hadn't paid his taxes (something like $120,000 in taxes), and we saw Nancy Killefer, his nominee for Chief Performance Officer (a bureaucrat's bureaucrat of a position, if ever I heard of one), pull out for a similar reason.

Unbelievably, Timothy Geithner, his nominee for Treasury, who had earlier been excused for his failure to pay taxes and had been confirmed and sworn in, still retains his seat.

Today, we were simultaneously amused and relieved, actually, to see the president reach across the aisle and nominate a Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, for Secretary of Commerce. Maybe he ran out of law-abiding Democrats.

It's a wise move for Obama, who has been chagrined and embarrassed by the fiscal irresponsibility of Geithner, Killefer and Daschle. Had he persisted in fighting for their nominations, he would have been rightfully accused of a promoting a double standard in this country, a double standard by which "only the little people pay taxes," to quote queen witch Leona Helmsley. The blatant hypocrisy in the executive branch would have seriously undermined his presidency, as the people would have revolted, a mere 15 days into his presidential term.

So, you may ask, why is Obama having so much trouble seating a scrupulous Cabinet? Are there not that many honorable Democrats to be found? (I can hear a chorus of people shouting, "NO!" and a bunch more murmuring, "Well, maybe not.")

Obama is getting a rude awakening here.

Let's start from the assumption that President Obama is an honorable guy, that his ethics and morals are beyond question. (I know some of you will disagree. Stick with me here. Don't let "guilt by association" get in the way.)

The last Democratic president we had with impeccable ethics and morals was Jimmy Carter. Carter's presidency was embarrassing and ineffective, but not because he was a "bad" man. In fact, Carter really was a "good" man. Carter's presidency failed because he believed that the rest of the executive branch, and Congress, and in fact the leaders of nations, were as "good" as he was. His cabinet members abused his trust in them, Congress laughed at his trust in them, and the leaders of nations took advantage of his trust in them, all to further their own goals and gain the advantage over everyone else -- including President Carter.

The next Democratic president after Carter was Bill Clinton. Let's throw Hillary in there as well, since she alternates between banking on her association with Bill and distancing herself from him, and I'm not about to let her have it both ways. The Clinton presidency was cynical and self-serving, at times vindictive and underhanded, but overridingly self-serving. The Clintons got a lot of things done in their term because they only cared about themselves and their success. Nobody and nothing else mattered, not even ethics, morals, or the law.

Well, that's not entirely true. Ethics, morals and the law mattered only insofar as they served the Clintons' interests and advanced their goals. The president's idea of ethics was that anything was okay, so long as it got him what he wanted and didn't impede his progress. (He really messed up on that one, but that's a story for another time.) The First Lady's idea of ethics, in her own words, was to do "whatever it takes" to accomplish her goals.

In sharp contrast to Carter, the Clintons were "bad" people -- ethically, morally, and legally -- and they believed that everyone else in the world was as "bad" as they were. They were always looking out for Number One, and never trusted anybody. The First Lady, in particular, wielded power far beyond her legal authority, and kept everyone in her power on a very short leash. That included the president, but he kept slipping his leash, and ended up bringing dishonor upon the Office of the President and upon his own name.

So, on the one hand, we have "good" President Carter, who failed because he naively believed everyone else to be "good" like him, and we have "bad" President Clinton, who succeeded at first, but ultimately failed, because he cynically believed everyone else to be "bad" like him. Assuming that Obama is a "good" and honorable man, he will need to avoid the mistakes of Jimmy Carter, and instead, like the Clintons, suspect that nobody else in his administration, in Congress or in the leadership of nations is "good" and can be trusted -- until they prove otherwise. Trust that is earned is less likely to be thrown away.

Where my teaching skills came from

My father turns 75 on December 21. My sister, Susan, is throwing a 75th birthday party for him, and we six kids are supposed to write a memory of Dad and read it aloud at his party. We're supposed to keep it to one page in length.

Hmm. I tried to think of the most significant memory of my father, something I can write a full page about. I decided to start by writing down all the significant memories I could think of, and ended up with a full page of ideas. I still don't know what to write about.

However, one thing stood out from the list. Check out these memories:

• sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot, waiting for my mother, and him teaching me how to to tie a square knot.
• teaching me how to ride a bicycle - and a horse
• teaching my brothers and me how to make scrambled eggs
• teaching us how to make red onion sandwiches on toast
• teaching me how to make bread pudding from the crusts we trimmed off the sacrament bread
• teaching me how to drive a stick shift
• taking advantage of everyday "teaching moments" to teach a wide variety of unforgettable lessons
• lamenting, as I prepared to go to college, that he had spent 17 years trying to teach me to work hard, and that once I finally learned the principle, I left home
• teaching me how to teach

Um, do you see a theme there? And then see how the theme wraps around on itself in that last point? Yeah. I always thought that I learned how to teach from Boyd K. Packer, one of the best professional teachers I've ever known. But as I squint and look at things more closely, I find that all of the skills and talents that have made me a great teacher originated with my father. Who knew?

Dan Fogelberg, a native Colorado musician, wrote a song about his father, also a musician. The chorus ends with these words:

My life has been a poor attempt

to imitate the man

I'm just a living legacy

to the leader of the band.

If you talk about teaching instead of music, that's me.

Your mama is sooooo cool...

This is a reprint of a letter I sent to my children last week.

Hi kids,

I'm going to take some time out from news this week and tell you how much I admire my sweet wife.

We had lived for 22 years in a one-income family, where Dad worked and Mom stayed home and raised the kids. (See http://www.raydepew.com/mothers_day.html ) When I got laid off in 2003, Valerie decided she needed to go out and find a job. She didn't want to, and I would have preferred to get another job myself. But we knew that would take a while, and engineering jobs were scarce, so she took her college degree and went out to find a job.

Nobody would hire her as a teacher at first, so she took a job as a para (that's "paraeducator", basically a babysitter for the NCLB kids) in the Poudre School District, and kept looking for a teaching job while working as a para. Her persistence paid off when she got hired to replace the Consumer and Family Studies (C&FS) teacher at Erwin Middle School.

The previous teacher was just coasting, waiting until it was time to retire, so the C&FS program was rather a mess. Valerie put her organizing skills to work cleaning up the program and turning it into something useful. She had to overcome a lot of inertia from the 7th and 8th graders, who had been there with the old teacher and were expecting the class to be an easy A like it had been. She turned it back into a serious class, where the kids were expected to earn their grades and to learn stuff. (Imagine, having to learn stuff at school. The very nerve of the teacher!)

The school had been given several thousand dollars and a mandate to use that money to install a new computer-based C&FS learning program. The money was supposed to pay for 8 computers, the software and the supplies, but not for training. Valerie insisted to the district administrators that the computers et cetera would be worthless if the teacher wasn't trained (and that they were short-sighted and a few other choice words for not being willing to spend $2500 on training after they had spent ten$ of thousand$ on the rest of the project), and she kept saying that to whoever would listen, until the district finally paid for her to spend a week in Michigan at a training class.

Then she came back to Colorado and supervised the installation and startup of the system -- the first one in all the school districts along the Front Range. She worked hand-in-hand with the vendor's tech support staff to resolve the startup problems that she encountered in the system's first year of operation, and became the "go-to girl" for the district and for neighboring districts, as people would call her about problems with installation, startup, and curriculum.

Sometimes Valerie would come home and tell me about a computer networking problem she had solved, and she would be using computer jargon that I never expected to hear coming out of her mouth. I would sit there with my mouth hanging open as she rattled off techno-buzzwords, not realizing what she was doing. She became so good at computers and networks that someone at the school asked her if she wanted to take over part of the computer tech's job, when the computer tech was badly injured in an accident. (She declined. She doesn't think she's that good.)

Her first year at Erwin, she observed that the cooking options in the classroom were limited by the length of time of the class. Some kids had expressed a desire to cook things that took longer, so she started a cooking club, which would meet after school one day a week to do some of these more advanced recipes. Wildcat Cuisine is now in its fourth year, and has grown from 12-16 members to 40 members. An article (with photos!) was published in an alternative local paper. She has gotten offers of assistance from a state dietician (with an office at CSU), Applebee's, and other local businesses. And the benefits of the club go beyond just trying the fancier recipes. For the first time, some of those kids have something they're good at, something they can be proud of, and a positive group of peers, where they feel like they belong. Other kids have impressed their parents with their culinary skills, and a few have even taken over mealtime at their homes.

In Colorado, after three years of teaching, you become tenured. The state is serious about those "three years." The third year doesn't expire until the first day of school in your fourth year. So on the first day of school this year, Valerie walked into the building and became a tenured teacher. But I knew she was "in" last year. She is a fixture of the school, as far as both students and teachers are concerned. Kids come to her for advice. Teachers seek out her opinion, either confidentially or in meetings and group discussions. Her classes, though not the easy A, are very popular.

She has a reputation as a straight shooter. One day in October, during passing period, one of her students came into class fuming with anger, because the art teacher had written her up for a rather flagrant dress code violation. It was something like a too-short skirt, or spaghetti straps, or something like this. The girl's friends were also upset, and they all wanted to know why the dress code was such a big deal. Valerie could tell that they weren't in a mood to learn about the food pyramid or anything else that day. So she set aside her planned lesson and spent the whole time talking with the kids about immodest clothing and so on. Valerie got very frank with the kids, and by the time she was done, they understood everything about dress codes, immodest clothing and so on. Word got around during passing period, and her next class wanted to have the same lesson, so she obliged them. No other teacher or administrator had ever laid it on the line like that.

And she's earning a reputation as a straight shooter among the parents, too. She doesn't take any crap from them. When a student is a slacker and the parent tries to excuse the kid's behavior or blame it on someone else (especially on Mom or another teacher), Valerie finds out VERY quickly what the real story is, and then tells the parent exactly what's going on and what they, not she, need to do about it. She's still training the parents, but word will eventually get around that she can't be deceived or bullied.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, two things happened. First, Valerie realized that she'd be a lot better set up for her (future) retirement if she could get further up the wage curve, and second, she realized that a lot of her students have trouble learning because they cannot read. So she decided to get a Master's degree in literacy and reading, and morph from a C&FS teacher to a reading/literacy coach. You kids probably don't remember how hard I had to work to get that MSEE degree from Stanford when we lived in Corvallis -- but if you do, then Valerie's working just that hard on her degree. She's acquiring quite a reputation with her professors at UNC, and I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up with a published paper out of at least one of her classes.

What makes all of this even more impressive is that she started teaching at age 47, and many of her colleagues (and UNC classmates) are Jason's or Kellie's age, or even younger. She went to a conference with one of them (Cinnamon Garner) and told her, "I hope you don't feel like you're hanging around with your mother." Her colleague replied, "No, I think of you more as my fun-to-hang-around-with aunt."

She is looking forward to graduating from UNC so she can have more time to devote to being a mom, a mother-in-law, and a grandma. (I think Chris and I are looking forward to that, too.) You know, in 2003 she could have gotten a job as a waitress instead. But then none of this would have happened. She's too modest to acknowledge "greatness" in any of this, and she doesn't take praise very well. She's blown me off every time I've tried to tell her what I've told you. But she really is a great lady.

--

Love

Dad