Truth Is In That Grave

Jan. 8, 2016

My daughter Emmy sent me a photo of a Navy officer in a cemetery. I can re-tell the story behind the photo, but not the name of the active duty officer nor the name on the gravestone.

It is National Wreaths Across America Day, the day volunteers place Christmas wreaths on the graves of honorable service women and men.

Just outside Washington, D.C., at Quantico National Cemetery, civilian and military volunteers walk between the rows of gravestones with armloads of pine wreaths tied with red bows. The grass green, the sky blue, the ranks of gravestones straight and true — sentinels, sentinels, sentinels silent now.

A U.S. Navy JAG lieutenant in crisp dress blues moves down one row, stooping, placing a wreath, rising, spine straight, saluting the headstone, moving to the next.

There is noise a ways down the row; a group of non-military volunteers are hooting. The lieutenant turns to eye them. The hooters skip a stone — no wreath — and move on noisily.

The lieutenant ponders the meaning of the bare stone, then notices another group, farther off, has left a stone bare and wreathless. There’s just a moment of hesitation, and then the meaning of the bare stone sinks in.

Each stone at Quantico — as at other honorary military cemeteries — is inscribed with a religious symbol, a name, service, conflict, birth date, date of death, and a short inscription.

The lieutenant strides to the bare headstone and sees the symbol of Islam, and then moves to another bare stone; it too has the symbol of Islam. Wreathless.

Into infinity, these who served and died with honor for their country – the United States of America – are dishonored because of their religion.

The lieutenant approaches the hooter group, shouts a profanity, and shaking with anger demands they leave and, as they leave, takes their wreaths, standing and breathing heavily.

She goes back to the first bare stone. It is a veteran of the Korean War, not an easy service. She places a wreath on it. She drops to one knee, takes a photo and sends a private message to friends, reflecting on the meaning of that grave.

She says people of all races and religions serve this country, that the graves of Muslim Americans dot the national cemeteries, that we have a duty to ignore current political upheaval and remain vigilant to our core values, that we cannot allow racial and religious intolerance to overtake this nation’s essence — the essence that makes it truly great.

A strong, young woman in dress blues kneeling at the grave of a Muslim Korean War veteran who served our country — his country, her country, my country, your country — symbolizes what this country stands for at its best.

Equality.

Her spine is not straight from practice, but from rightness. This country has a righteous heart at its best.

That is the story I wanted to tell. I know the lieutenant’s name and I have her photo; I don’t know her, but honor her as the personification of duty fulfilled. I should end there.

But I have to address the obvious issue — those hooting oafs. They entered that cemetery with wreaths and good intentions.

The answer: There is a transformative hatred afoot in the United States of America.

The rhetoric of a man like Donald Trump works the same way the rhetoric of Hitler works, Joe McCarthy works, or any other monger works. They feed on human insecurity, put a mask on it, and rile people up.

The mask is always the face of the “foreigner.” In the U.S. it has been the black, the Jew, the Asian, the Hispanic, and now it is the Muslim. The demagogue points at the mask of the “foreigner” as society’s problem instead of addressing the real problems.

Afraid of beheadings, war, joblessness, Obama, medical costs? The foreigner did that. The solution, according to Trumpists, is to hate a foreigner.

For the hooters, Muslims have become the thing to fear and hate, instead of dealing logically with the difficult problems of the day.

Intolerance is a one-size-fits-all solution to the modern world’s complexity. The “war on terrorism” is as idiotic a solution to Middle Eastern complexity as the “war on drugs” is to racial discrimination and poverty.

How can the Quantico hooters believe Muslims are a problem in the country that Muslims served and died for? Because Trumpism — a new and only slightly modified form of McCarthyism — is working, masking the truth with falsehoods.

The truth is in that grave where the lieutenant knelt. There rest the relics of Muslim service, honor, and sacrifice.

That’s why I wanted to tell the lieutenant’s story — to show, in the face of bigotry and demagoguery — the real truth that is the heart of the nation.

The Muslim is not the foreigner here. Those who hate are.

Perhaps like you — the average reader of the Northern Express — I cast myself as something of a cynic, something of an iconoclast, the sort who doesn’t salute the flag, support the Blue Angels, or march in mainstream parades. I’m always going to be that way, somewhat put off by the petty forms of allegiance.

But the lieutenant? I stand and sincerely salute the lieutenant in dress blues at Quantico National Cemetery on December 17, 2015, for she is the ideal of the military’s role in our civilian democracy. In the face of hate, she has the spine, the intelligence, and the personal integrity to honor the truth in that grave.

Grant Parsons is a Traverse City native and a trial attorney with a keen interest in local government.