Where Do They Find Young Men and Women Like This? …
In the Heartbeat of America
An opinion piece by Steve Kayser, Editor - "Expert Access"
The most successful businesses have at their core a singular strength, people. The challenge for businesses is to attract and retain the best and brightest.
This article is about some very special people.
Incredibly special.
You need to know them. Find them. Hire them. Mentor them.
Expert Access now has 12,997 subscribers worldwide. Our readers (You) range from CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, senior-line business managers, programmers, technology users, industry analysts, educators, systems integrators, engineers, entrepreneurs and others.
I’m calling you out.
Challenging each one of you. At the end of this article, you’ll know what to do. If you accept the challenge and take action, the spirit, the heart, the growth of your business, your company and even your life will be magnificently uplifted. Strengthened. Bettered.
It Begins
Last week I heard a profoundly moving moment in the battle to liberate the Iraqi people. It reawakened me to a truly momentous truth. Maybe you saw it. Maybe you didn’t. It got very little notice.
A reporter, in a brief respite from battle, had arranged for some of the troops with whom he was embedded with to use his satellite phone to call their loved ones.
In the vagaries of war, each moment is eternity. Each breath a blessing. Each opportunity to speak to a loved one, a golden, cherished moment in time, perhaps the last.
The reporter motioned a soldier over and offered him the phone. The young soldier, declined without hesitating and said,
“I’d like to give my call to my platoon sergeant. His wife is going to have a baby at any moment and he hasn’t talked to her in weeks, can you hold on until I get him?” *
The soldier rushed away.
The reporter seemed to be shaken. He understood well the value of the phone call. The value of possibly one’s last conversation on this brief sojourn called life with a loved one. I ask you … under the real threat of chemical weapons, bombs, bullets and suicide bombers, would you give up a call to your loved ones? Possibly your last?
Think about it.
How much would you value that call?
The reporter turned to another group of soldiers. As he offered his satellite phone to them, they too, without hesitating, declined, and said, “We want to call our fallen buddy’s parents. To tell them he died bravely. He died fighting. He died heroically.”
And in their eyes, their faces, you saw the unspoken part of that message, ‘We loved him. We mourn with you. We will never, ever, forget him.’
The reporter said almost in awe, in wonder and in disbelief,
“Where do they find young men and women like this?”
At this point I detected a mist in the room -- affecting my eyes.
Now, there's been some debate whether this happened.
However, it doesn't matter to me because the image and question echoed in my head.
Echoed.
Where do they find young men and women like this who think serving their country is not a duty but an honor?
In America.
The Heartbeat of America.
They are the Heartbeat of America.
Where do they find young men and women like this who can pick up, leave their families and well-ordered lives in the United States, pitch a tent in godforsaken desert sands to help free another nation’s people from evil and oppression?
In America.
The Heartbeat of America.
They are the Heartbeat of America.
Where do they find young men and women like this who’ll risk their lives again and again to rescue their fellow soldiers? That, while rescuing PFC. Jessica Lynch, found out that some of their fellow soldiers lay in shallow graves outside the building. They had no shovels.
Their answer?
Bare hands.
Yes. Bare hands.
With bare hands they dug their fallen comrades bodies up and out of the ground. They refused to leave them behind. Yes, good question. Where do they find young men and women like this?
In America.
The Heartbeat of America.
They are the Heartbeat of America.
Where do they find young men and women like this who pay the ultimate sacrifice on the altar of liberty? The altar of freedom?
Where do they find the families of these young men and women who, though mourning their grievous loss, mourning the absence of their cherished love, don’t complain? Not only don’t these families complain, more often than not, they proclaim the greatness of these cherished, ingrained concepts called freedom and liberty … for all people.
In America.
The Heartbeat of America.
They are the Heartbeat of America.
Where do they find young men and women who not only understand, but live the principles of one of the most profound documents of all time, that states,
“Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
In America.
The Heartbeat of America.
They are the Heartbeat of America.
Where do they find young men and women that prove,
“Whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure?”
In America.
The Heartbeat of America.
They are the Heartbeat of America.
Soon these fine men and women will return to America. A lot of them were supposed to have been discharged over a year ago but had their terms of enlistment extended due to the war in Iraq. Another unheralded sacrifice.
What will be one of their biggest challenges upon returning?
Jobs.
Sounds mundane doesn’t it? But it’s true.
They’ll need jobs.
You know what to do.
Show them the glory, the greatness, the reward, the appreciation of America.
Take action.
Hire them.
And live these eternally healing words from Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us the right to see, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind the nation’s wounds; to care for him that borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan— to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” - Abraham Lincoln - March 4, 1865.
Take action.
Hire them.
Train them. Guide them. Succeed with them.
Tap the vein of gold that is the Heartbeat of America. Make it a beacon, a wellspring, an eternal seed of hope.
And the foundation of future greatness.
Say thanks to the troops.
Steve Kayser is the Editor of Cincom’s Expert Access, and a former U.S. Military Policeman in the 212th M.P. Battalion. Comments, Feedback, additional information? E-mail Steve at: skayser@cincom.com
* Conversations Paraphrased
