Medal Of Honor

Today's Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post gave some major space to a story about a visit to Liberty Middle School by a Medal of Honor winner, Drew Dix. I liked the Post's version better, they described how the school went to the extra attention of putting flags for each medal winner out in front of their school, and how they had studied about what it meant to win the Medal of Honor.

Drew is almost a local boy, raised in Pueblo when he went off to the Vietnam War. The Post article describes his experience during the Tet Offensive, and how he became a real-life hero. Of course, I have friends who also were heroes during that war and never received such a prestigious award, as well as others who never made it back, but it's people like Drew Dix that act as a symbol of pride for all acts of bravery during a war.

From the article in the Rocky Mountain News comes this impressive reaction to Drew's visit and talk by Joel Kapp, a 13 year old eighth grader,   " War isn't necessarily all about fighting. For some people, like the Medal of Honor recipients, it's about what you do during that war and the decisions you make, and whether or not they were the right ones, and living with yourself after you've made the decision. When you look to the person on your right and you look to the person on your left, you should see value in each and every person you see, just because human life is what we fight for in the first place, even if it means the death of others."