Over the last couple days, more than fifty thousand Americans became
casualties in a field in Pennsylvania.
Beginning on July 1st and ending on July 3rd, 1863, the Battle of
Gettysburg became the turning point of the Civil War.
Roughly 23,000 Union soldiers and 28,000 Confederate soldiers were
killed, wounded, captured or missing during just three days of fighting. More
than fifty thousand casualties in one place, all in the name of what America
would become.
Could you imagine the media coverage if something like that happened in
2026?
Growing up during the tail end of Vietnam, we played war almost as often
as we played baseball and smear the queer.
Every kid seemed to have a favorite
war.
We had older cousins, brothers, young uncles and neighborhood kids who
fought in Vietnam. We had older uncles and men down the block who served in
Korea. We had grandfathers and church ushers who fought in the Second World
War.
I even knew a great-uncle who fought in what he called the Great War. I
knew it as World War I and could never understand why he refused to call it
that.
He died when I was in fourth grade, and somehow, I ended up with his
mess kit and his helmet.
I still have the utensils he carried while fighting in Europe. The
helmet, with its unmistakable shape from a war fought fifty years before I was
born, eventually became a prop for the Cathedral High School drama department.
If I had to pick my favorite war to study, it has always been the Civil
War.
The Battle of Gettysburg sparked a lifelong fascination with the period
when our country was most deeply divided. It made me want to understand how a
nation could become so divided and somehow find its way back together.
That fascination was fueled even more by a history teacher at Dear Old
Cathedral named Daniel "Doc" Wellman.
Doc stood about five feet tall and
nearly five feet wide. He had a thick beard, a receding hairline with long hair
hanging over his collar and looked like he could have stepped out of the 1860s
himself.
He loved two things with all his heart, American history and Indiana
Hoosier basketball. By the time I left his classroom, I loved Abe Lincoln and
Robert Knight.
The ShepKids, on the other hand, don't know many details about the wars
America has fought. Their knowledge of wars mostly begins and ends with George
Lucas and Luke Skywalker... maybe followed by the time Martians attacked Earth
in the 1990s.
"Dad... were you ever in danger
when the extraterrestrials invaded the world?"
"Are you serious, son?"
"Yeah. I think it was
1996."
"You've got to be shitting
me."
I saw an opening and couldn't resist.
"Yes, son. Terrifying time. I
fought off three of those slimy bastards downtown between State and Wabash. I
was walking to catch the CTA when they tried to suck my heart right out of my
body."
There sat my sixteen-year-old,
completely mesmerized.
"Really, Dad?"
"No, son. I just took the liberty of bullshitting you. Get your
alien invasions straight. The war between Earth and Mars happened about five
hundred years before I was born."
Sometimes I feel sorry for this
generation. Not because they are bad kids.
Because they don't know what a nazi or an Imperial Japanese soldier was.
They don't know a Yankee from a Johnny Reb, or a Redcoat from a Founding
Father.
But they do know the Force is with them and that the Men in Black are
protecting Earth from monsters from another galaxy.
Over the next couple of days, we will wave flags, sing patriotic songs
and celebrate the birth of a nation that turns 250 years old this weekend.
It truly is an honor to live in a country where so many men and women
have sacrificed to preserve this republic.
I don't want the ShepKids to grow up with a favorite war the way many of
us did, pretending to defend the neighborhood White Hen Pantry and the parish
rectory from Germans and the 1st Alabama infantry regiment.
I just want them to have a better appreciation
for the history that made this country possible. I have a feeling Doc Wellman
would remind me that if we don't pass that history along, somebody else will
replace it with something less important and incorrect.
So put on that Spirit of '76, you gorgeous Chalkheads, and celebrate the
red, white and blue.
Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.
Valley Forge. Antietam. Gettysburg. Iwo Jima.
Gusto,
astonishment... and a sun with a smile.
