What’s happened to our country? We are in the middle of an undeclared war crippling the world’s oil supply. We watch the Middle East on fire every day. Thousands killed including US service personnel with no end in sight. Gas prices climbing by the hour. Hours long lines at airports. Our government is unable to function. The rest of the world which used to be able to count on us to lead the way and use our power to keep them safe are stunned and afraid of what we have become. “The shining city of the hill” was a metaphor used by Ronald Reagan to describe the United States as a beacon of hope, freedom, opportunity and a champion of American exceptionalism. It comes from the bible, “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” How’s that looking today?

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You’re taken in by the beautifully restored 1930 George Washington Ballroom at the War Memorial in Trenton, NJ. The only light are hundreds of candles illuminating the stage, along the floor lining the walls and single candles at the beginning of every aisle. Our tickets were a birthday gift from friends. It was a one hour concert of Beatles’s music played by a string quartet. The crowd was Baby Boomers who grew up in the Sixties when the Beatles created maybe the greatest collection of popular music in the 20th century. The four musicians, two women and two men, playing two violins, a viola, and a bass sat down and brought the Beatles music to life as you never heard it before.

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There is no more consequential decision a president makes than committing the nation to war. There is a process of getting congressional approval to declare war and a full explanation to the American people of why war is justified and what the goals and end game are. The current Trump war got none of that. We got a video made and released in the middle of the night from his gold encrusted estate in Florida. He didn’t have the decency to even wear a tie. But he did have that ridiculous white hat on with USA across the front of it. Where was Tony Soprano to tell him to take the hat off when he was declaring war as he told the guy to take his hat off in his friend’s restaurant? Trump was asking our military to do something he avoided and insulted them over the years for committing to the defense of the country.

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The last time I wrote about a birthday I was sixty-five and I called it “The Last Birthday”. I wrote about the significant birthdays in our lives turning eighteen, then twenty-one, and finally sixty-five and what those milestones represented in our lives. I was looking forward to more birthdays. But now I’m rethinking this “Last Birthday” idea. It’s ten years later and I’m staring at seventy-five. These last ten years have brought retirement. We watched our four granddaughters grow up, now reaching teenage years. Maureen and I have taken some great trips and spent summers at the Jersey shore. We are healthy and active and think we look younger than those other seventy-five year olds. But life changes.

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Just when we thought he couldn’t shock us and outrage us any more with his behavior. Trump continues to do everything to divide us with his narcissistic personality, the constant need for admiration. But it’s always the wrong kind of attention.We have seen the signs and actions that told us he was a racist and bigot. He is trying to erase Black history from museums and national parks. He even ordered the display of household slaves exhibited at George Washington’s house in Philadelphia taken down. National Parks used to offer free admission on Martin Luther King Day. Trump changed the free day to Flag Day, which also happens to be his birthday. How low and petty can you get.?

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“From the time he was three, we knew he wanted to be in the military.” Barton Humlhanz’s mother, Michele said. “He tried to join the military in high school. Bart wanted to be a military police officer. When he graduated, there was no openings in the army for a military police officer. The army said join the reserves and we’ll get you in later. That didn’t pan out and Bart got out of his contract. After graduating from Saucon Valley High School in January, 2001, Bart got a job at a convenience store pumping gas.

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This is the time of year we look back on the good and the bad. We can all argue about what we think should be included on which list. I have my own list of people who showed us examples of those not afraid to make sacrifices to stare down the world’s bully. They are men and women who finally couldn’t take it anymore no matter what the cost.

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Mia Tretta was in her dorm room with a friend at Brown University last Saturday when she got an alert warning about an emergency at the engineering building. She thought it couldn’t be a shooting. We all know now it was a shooting that killed two students and wounded nine. The Associated Press spoke with Mia on the phone on Sunday. What she said should shock us all. “No one should ever have to go through one shooting, let alone two. And as someone who was shot at my high school when I was fifteen years old, I never thought that this was something I’d have to go through again.” Tretta was shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting in 2019 at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two students were killed; Mia and two other students were wounded.

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“He was a great kid, an All American boy. He went through Pennridge High School. He was a varsity football player, defensive end. That was his passion.”

Bob Mininger’s mother Paula said he also had an interest in computer engineering and went to Montgomery County Community College. “Then he realized he didn’t want to sit in front of a computer 24 hours a day.”

Bob said he wanted to join the FBI or CIA and he read a military background would help. Bob was twenty years old when he enlisted in the Marines. “I didn’t want him to go. My ex (husband) was talking to him. We fought tooth and nail on it. I was not one of those people to run to Canada, to do anything like that. When you have your oldest son, one out of two sons talking about going into war in a foreign country, that’s totally out of your control this unknown hanging over your head.”

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“He was born to be a soldier,” says Brian Faunce’s mother Judy. He was born in the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, November 11 Veterans’ Day. Brian was the middle child with an older and younger sister. He stood his own if his sisters would gang up on him. When he tried things, he was committed.

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