In the summer of 1992, while driving a dirt road near his Pratt, Kansas home, my dad saw a tractor—driverless—rolling across a field, pulling a land leveler.
Dad felt a chill. He owned that equipment. His brother Harold had borrowed it and would have been driving it down that very road about that time. Dad soon found Harold lying beside the road. He was fully conscious, but Dad could see he was facing the worst day of his life.
Harold’s death brought a hard freeze to our family landscape. But it blew a deep and ragged hole right through Dad’s heart. He never recovered.
From that day it seemed Dad’s strong mind began to melt.
Dad and Mom visited our home in Virginia soon after that. In planning for their visit, I tried to find something that would engage Dad again, some spark that would animate his wonderful and vivid personality.
Two weeks before they arrived, I learned that Arleigh Burke, one of the last living admirals from World War 2, lived in nearby Fairfax. So, I found a phone number for his home.
When Roberta “Bobbie” Burke answered the phone, I introduced myself and told her about Dad, and that he would be here in a few days. Then I asked if “the admiral would be open to a visit from another sailor.”
“Oh, yes,” she replied gleefully, “He would so love that! Please come.” She gave me their address, and we agreed on a date and time.
When my parents arrived, I told Dad we had an appointment with Admiral Arleigh Burke the next day. Dad’s uncertain smile revealed his anxiety; he’d never met an admiral. Even after 48 years of civilian life, he still thought like an enlisted man.
The next morning, Dad asked too many questions about protocol and social courtesies as we drove from our home in Reston over to Fairfax. Then he grew stone silent as we entered the high-rise luxury condo. Finally, we stood at the Burke door. When I knocked, an elderly man, gripping a walker, jerked the door open and smiled.
“Jack,” he barked, and grabbed Dad’s hand. Dad relaxed in the invitation to a safe place.
We spent 90 minutes in the Burke living room. Bobbie gracefully vanished from the male gathering, as I’m sure she’d often done in 72 years of marriage to a Navy man.
As the fly on the wall, I watched in astonishment as Arleigh Burke, a former Chief of Naval Operations, a major player in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, an admiral who had a class of destroyers named after him, sat with an enlisted man, a Kansas railroader, a Sunday School teacher. But their eyes glistened at the same heartsounds of battle, victory, and loss. And they burst into riotous laughter at the same nuances of Navy culture.
I’ll never forget Dad’s face as Admiral Burke described watching Dad’s ship, the USS Princeton, through binoculars as she exploded and sank.
The 20th century had taken those two men to vastly different places, but they also shared enormous common ground. I saw them touch their bonds. Class distinctions blew away like dust; they were both just sailors.
As we rose to leave, I saw sadness in Bobbie’s eyes. Admiral Burke, using his walker, escorted us to the elevator; he clearly wanted to extend the visit as long as possible. As we stepped onto the elevator, he softly said, “Come back anytime, Jack.” They both knew they’d never meet again.
Arleigh Burke died six months later. Two thousand people attended his funeral; President Clinton delivered the eulogy. Dad lived more than 10 years from that day. Many came to his funeral.
For me, that day of the old sailors has become a clear and enduring reminder that our value has little to do with the externals—possessions we acquire, the awards we win, or the accidents that cripple us.
We’re all His children. He leads us in an everlasting way, even when that way passes through the cemetery on the way to higher ground.
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