Note:
The following incident took place two months before Memorial Day.
I have no doubt as to what the outcome would have been if it had occurred during the recent Memorial Day weekend.
Now that Memorial Day is over, let’s continue to remember.
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It is late Thursday afternoon.
You are at the gate anxious to board your flight.
You are finally on your way home after a hectic business day, or you and your family are on your way to a well-earned long weekend at a fancy resort, or you are on your way to your favorite niece’s wedding; perhaps you are on your way to a very important business meeting or perhaps you are just returning home after visiting Granma.
The flight is overbooked.
Also standing at the gate, looking somber, is a family of six, hoping to board the oversold flight.
Finally, an announcement comes saying that that the flight is overbooked and the airline representative makes the usual offer of a $500 flight voucher for those willing to give up their seats and take a later flight.
The representative then announces that those needing the seats belong to “a family on their way home from meeting their son’s body as it returned from Afghanistan.”
Three people volunteer.
Three more seats are needed.
The family just stands there, somber, looking, hoping…
It is the family of Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Wilson, age 24 and newly married.
Lance Cpl. Justin Wilson, of Palm City, Fla. had been assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 10th Marines, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Three days before his family members found themselves at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport trying to get on a flight, Wilson was killed by a roadside bomb at Helmand province, Afghanistan.
Colleen M. Getz who was at the same gate, waiting for the same flight on March 25, tells us that the family was trying to return home to hold their loved one’s funeral, after having journeyed to Dover Air Force Base, Del., to meet his casket flown-in from Afghanistan and after having been stuck for most of the day at another airport because of oversold flights.
And there they were, standing beside [the airline representative], looking at us, waiting to see what we would decide. It wasn’t a hard decision for me; my plans were easily adjusted. I volunteered, as did two women whom I later learned sacrificed important personal plans.
But we three were not enough: Six were needed. So we stood there watching the family – dignified and mute, weighed with grief and fatigue – as the airline representative repeatedly called for assistance for this dead soldier’s family. No one else stepped forward. The calls for volunteers may have lasted only 20 or 30 minutes, but it seemed hours. It was almost unbearable to watch, yet to look away was to see the more than 100 other witnesses to this tragedy who were not moved to help. Then it did become unbearable when, in a voice laced with desperation and tears, the airline representative pleaded, “This young man gave his life for our country, can’t any of you give your seats so his family can get home?”
What did the other passengers do?
Perhaps more important, what would you have done?
Now that Memorial Day 2010 is over, what will we all do for our heroes—for those who have fallen, for those who are still serving and for our veterans—during the rest of the year, until the next Memorial Day?
Please read the rest of this heartbreaking story—one full of insight and purport—at the Washington Times, by clicking here.
Colleen M. Getz works in the NATO policy office of the Department of Defense.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.