JB
Honorary Moderator Emeritus
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2001
- Messages
- 45,907
I ordinarily don't care to read stuff that has been cut and pasted from other sources and has usually been around for ages. That includes sociopolitical themes as well as "humor".<br /><br />I'm going to make an exception, because what follows makes me so proud of America and Americans.<br /><br />The writer and his wife live in LA and both work for Uncle Sam.<br /><br />A Day at Baltimore Airport<br /><br />Dear Friends and Family,<br /><br />I hope that you will spare me a few minutes of your time to tell you<br />about something that I saw on Monday, October 27.<br /><br />I had been attending a conference in Annapolis and was coming home on<br />Sunday. As you may recall, Los Angeles International Airport was closed<br /><br />on Sunday, October 26, because of the fires that affected air traffic<br />control. Accordingly, my flight, and many others, were canceled and I<br />wound up spending a night in Baltimore.<br /><br />My story begins the next day. When I went to check in at the United<br />counter Monday morning I saw a lot of soldiers home from Iraq. Most<br />were very young and all had on their desert camouflage uniforms. This<br />was as change from earlier, when they had to buy civilian clothes in<br />Kuwait to fly home. It was a visible reminder that we are in a war. It<br />probably was pretty close to what train terminals were like in World War II.<br /><br />Many people were stopping the troops to talk to them, asking them<br />questions in the Starbucks line or just saying "Welcome Home." In<br />addition to all the flights that had been canceled on Sunday, the<br />weather was terrible in Baltimore and the flights were backed up. So,<br />there were a lot of unhappy people in the terminal trying to get home,<br />but nobody that I saw gave the soldiers a bad time.<br /><br />By the afternoon, one plane to Denver had been delayed several hours.<br />United personnel kept asking for volunteers to give up their seats and<br />take another flight. They weren't getting many takers. Finally, a<br />United spokeswoman got on the PA and said this, "Folks. As you can see,<br />there are a lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days<br />of leave and we're trying to get them where they need to go without<br />spending any more time in an airport then they have to. We sold them<br />all tickets, knowing we would oversell the flight. If we can, we want<br />to get them all on this flight. We want all the soldiers to know that<br />we respect what you're doing, we are here for you and we love you."<br /><br />At that, the entire terminal of cranky, tired, travel-weary people, a<br />cross-section of America, broke into sustained and heartfelt applause.<br />The soldiers looked surprised and very modest. Most of them just<br />looked at their boots. Many of us were wiping away tears.<br /><br />And, yes, people lined up to take the later flight and all the soldiers<br />went to Denver on that flight.<br /><br />That little moment made me proud to be an American, and also told me why<br /><br />we will win this war.<br /><br />If you want to send my little story on to your friends and family, feel<br />free. This is not some urban legend. I was there, I was part of it, I<br />saw it happen.<br /><br />Will Ross<br />Administrative Judge<br />United States Department of Defense
