thedrifter
05-16-07, 06:40 AM
Small-town values give will to sacrifice
Dennis Rogers, Staff Writer
PAMLICO BEACH - It always seems to be the boys from the back roads and small towns who do most of the fighting and dying in our wars.
Some smart people who ought to know better offer the condescending explanation that young folks from less wealthy and less sophisticated neighborhoods enlist not because they want to serve their country but because they have no better options.
Such patronizing cynics could not be be more mistaken.
The little country church where Johnathan Kirk came to Jesus was too small to seat all the sad people who wanted to say goodbye to him on a stormy Sunday afternoon in early May.
So the congregation of Wades Point Pentecostal Holiness Church, along with hundreds of friends, neighbors and strangers gathered down by the Pamlico River, down where Rattlesnake Lane meets Old Pamlico Beach Road, at the community cemetery. Some of them had to park a mile away, but they came anyway, trudging with heads down into the full fury of a spring nor'easter.
They came because Johnathan was one of them, a local fisherman's son who grew up on the water. Like many young men, he wanted to taste the excitement of life before he settled down to take his place among them.
Lance Cpl. Johnathan Kirk, U.S. Marine Corps, died May 1 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., from wounds received a week earlier in Iraq. He was 25.
Family and friends and strangers stoically bent their heads in prayer as the intense storm threw stinging sand in their faces. Most of preacher Dean Fulford's words were ripped away by the howling winds. At one time it took eight strong men to keep the funeral home tent from blowing away. But you didn't have to hear or see everything to know this small community down where the Pamlico meets the Pungo was hurting. The shrieks and wails of honest grief were even stronger than the raging storm.
He was John and Glenda's boy, an ambitious kid who got his associate degree at Beaufort Community College before he enlisted in the Marines. He'd been in Iraq just three weeks when a roadside bomb blew him up and broke this small community's heart.
Johnathan Kirk was one of two Eastern North Carolina servicemen buried in three days in early May. Staff Sgt. Clint Moore, a paratrooper from Benson, was one of nine members of the 82nd Airborne Division killed when suicide bombers blew themselves up at his outpost in Iraq.
Clint Moore was handsome and a gifted pianist. Johnathan Kirk was an athlete and a straight-A student. Friends say both of them were outgoing, charming young men who could have done anything they wanted.
Which, by enlisting, is exactly what they did.
Those snobs for whom military service is a preposterous notion best left to other people's children will never understand why some young men and women eagerly accept the hardships and risks of military service. The pay is lousy, the educational benefits are so-so, the duty stations are in less-than-scenic locales and the work is hard, tedious and dangerous beyond imagination.
But there is something to be said for knowing that in times of peril, you had the courage to step forward when others did not.
Those who have served don't talk about it, but only they know what it means to raise your hand and swear an oath to defend home and country with your life.
And when their service is done, whether it is 30 years or 30 months, they can look at themselves in the mirror and know that in a time when many sneer at such old-fashioned values, they chose honor.
That's what they get for giving up their youth for national service. That's what they get for days of danger and nights of loneliness. That's what they get for standing their ground when others turned away. That might not mean much to those who chose not to serve, but it means everything to those who do.
Such values are easy to find in small communities where young people are baptized in the same churches as their grandparents. They learn early on what is expected of them and, in numbers that mystify their big-city cousins, they continue the family and neighborhood tradition of military service.
That's why the folks of Beaufort County, faces deeply lined by the hard wind that seemed to moan with them, endured an ugly day to be there when Johnathan Kirk was laid to rest in their sandy soil.
And that's why hundreds of small-town people with hands over their hearts and tears in their eyes lined the streets of Benson for Clint Moore.
In Benson and in Pamlico Beach and in every community touched by the sadness of sacrifice, the people gather to comfort the grieving, to bond with neighbors, and yes, to celebrate that in this age of cynicism, they can still count on the kid from down the road.
Staff writer Dennis Rogers can be reached at 829-4750 or dennis.rogers@newsobserver.com.
Ellie
Dennis Rogers, Staff Writer
PAMLICO BEACH - It always seems to be the boys from the back roads and small towns who do most of the fighting and dying in our wars.
Some smart people who ought to know better offer the condescending explanation that young folks from less wealthy and less sophisticated neighborhoods enlist not because they want to serve their country but because they have no better options.
Such patronizing cynics could not be be more mistaken.
The little country church where Johnathan Kirk came to Jesus was too small to seat all the sad people who wanted to say goodbye to him on a stormy Sunday afternoon in early May.
So the congregation of Wades Point Pentecostal Holiness Church, along with hundreds of friends, neighbors and strangers gathered down by the Pamlico River, down where Rattlesnake Lane meets Old Pamlico Beach Road, at the community cemetery. Some of them had to park a mile away, but they came anyway, trudging with heads down into the full fury of a spring nor'easter.
They came because Johnathan was one of them, a local fisherman's son who grew up on the water. Like many young men, he wanted to taste the excitement of life before he settled down to take his place among them.
Lance Cpl. Johnathan Kirk, U.S. Marine Corps, died May 1 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., from wounds received a week earlier in Iraq. He was 25.
Family and friends and strangers stoically bent their heads in prayer as the intense storm threw stinging sand in their faces. Most of preacher Dean Fulford's words were ripped away by the howling winds. At one time it took eight strong men to keep the funeral home tent from blowing away. But you didn't have to hear or see everything to know this small community down where the Pamlico meets the Pungo was hurting. The shrieks and wails of honest grief were even stronger than the raging storm.
He was John and Glenda's boy, an ambitious kid who got his associate degree at Beaufort Community College before he enlisted in the Marines. He'd been in Iraq just three weeks when a roadside bomb blew him up and broke this small community's heart.
Johnathan Kirk was one of two Eastern North Carolina servicemen buried in three days in early May. Staff Sgt. Clint Moore, a paratrooper from Benson, was one of nine members of the 82nd Airborne Division killed when suicide bombers blew themselves up at his outpost in Iraq.
Clint Moore was handsome and a gifted pianist. Johnathan Kirk was an athlete and a straight-A student. Friends say both of them were outgoing, charming young men who could have done anything they wanted.
Which, by enlisting, is exactly what they did.
Those snobs for whom military service is a preposterous notion best left to other people's children will never understand why some young men and women eagerly accept the hardships and risks of military service. The pay is lousy, the educational benefits are so-so, the duty stations are in less-than-scenic locales and the work is hard, tedious and dangerous beyond imagination.
But there is something to be said for knowing that in times of peril, you had the courage to step forward when others did not.
Those who have served don't talk about it, but only they know what it means to raise your hand and swear an oath to defend home and country with your life.
And when their service is done, whether it is 30 years or 30 months, they can look at themselves in the mirror and know that in a time when many sneer at such old-fashioned values, they chose honor.
That's what they get for giving up their youth for national service. That's what they get for days of danger and nights of loneliness. That's what they get for standing their ground when others turned away. That might not mean much to those who chose not to serve, but it means everything to those who do.
Such values are easy to find in small communities where young people are baptized in the same churches as their grandparents. They learn early on what is expected of them and, in numbers that mystify their big-city cousins, they continue the family and neighborhood tradition of military service.
That's why the folks of Beaufort County, faces deeply lined by the hard wind that seemed to moan with them, endured an ugly day to be there when Johnathan Kirk was laid to rest in their sandy soil.
And that's why hundreds of small-town people with hands over their hearts and tears in their eyes lined the streets of Benson for Clint Moore.
In Benson and in Pamlico Beach and in every community touched by the sadness of sacrifice, the people gather to comfort the grieving, to bond with neighbors, and yes, to celebrate that in this age of cynicism, they can still count on the kid from down the road.
Staff writer Dennis Rogers can be reached at 829-4750 or dennis.rogers@newsobserver.com.
Ellie