9/11/2011 Field of Flags

A few weeks ago, Senator Barry Loudermilk and I had the honor of making a presentation on behalf of the family support group for the citizen soldiers of the National Guard’s 108th Squadron.  Georgia’s National Guard is in every county of the state, and this particular family support group is spread out over 18 counties.  These awards recognize individuals in the community that went out of their way to help the family support group in times of need during the deployment.

This presentation was made to the Home Depot store in Cartersville, for their outstanding contributions during the last deployment of the 108th Squadron.  In the damage from the heavy storm that went through this area in the Spring, a call went out that the wife of a soldier deployed overseas had had some trees fall in her yard, blocking the driveway.  Home Depot responded with the Boy Scouts of America and Civil Air Patrol to aid this family member.  And when we got to the site, the Home Depot personnel provided a safety course to all the volunteers before we started working. 

During the presentation I was able to thank this business for what they did on behalf of the 108th family support group – for providing resources and trained personnel in a time of need.  It serves as a good example of community preparedness, and of their leadership in responding to this natural disaster.

We use such examples to remind ourselves to be ready.  Emergency response programs such as LEPC and CERT enable a community to identify resources and to develop and practice the leadership that makes responding to such circumstances effective.  These exercises also provide a forum for each volunteer group to meet their counterparts and the professional emergency services personnel they will be working with, when a disaster occurs.

One thing you cannot adequately prepare for is the human impact of a tragedy.  In our parents’ and grandparents’ generation, that event was the WW II attack on Pearl Harbor.  It was an equal opportunity tragedy, affecting the poor and the rich equally.  There were no cries of party bias, there was no discrimination in its impact.  And their generation learned from this disaster – learned to be prepared, to educate themselves equally, to prepare themselves with their own means equally, and recognizing that during a tragedy it’s not the poor and minorities who are hit the worst – everyone in the tragedy is hit equally.  Our remembrance of the servicemen who were killed in that attack brought our country together in a time of worldwide conflict, and their memory is revered to this day.

I too had a family member at Pearl Harbor, Austin Collins.  He went down with the USS Arizona.  Today, the American Legion post in Sebree, Kentucky is named in his honor.

This weekend we remember the attack ten years ago on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the intended attack on the White House in Washington D.C.  Again we find ourselves in a time of worldwide conflict, but of a very different nature.  Yet here too, we can honor the memory of those who perished – the civilians who were in the offices and on the airplanes as well as the responders that came to their aid – and to learn from it.  They didn’t ask to be heroes.  But then again, none of us do.  It is in how we respond when a disaster strikes that our true mettle is seen.

By educating ourselves to be prepared for any disaster – terrorist or natural – we create a way to put ourselves and our families in the best position possible after a disaster.  In desperate situations, there are always cries for leadership.  Do not cry for the leadership.  Find yourself in a position that you’ll be too busy leading to be concerned about who’s leading.  Education is a tool.  Educate yourself to the example that you would like to follow.  Your service in this, as much as in the actions you perform, is the example that is so greatly needed.

Although we use such examples to remind ourselves to be ready, do not let disasters be the only time that the community can see the mettle of its citizens.  Let this be your charge in the future, as it is given to you by those who perished on this day.

Let us remember September 11 and honor its memory as a call to action.  It’s a call to leadership.  The victims would want you to be leaders, the victims would not like their deaths to be in vain.  Support those who mourn, learn from the example of those who died, and be prepared.  Those victims would want you to succeed.  Do not fail their memories, do not fail in your future, and do not fail in this charge.  Godspeed to you on this day.