Repost: Greensboro soldier last Iraq casualty

Ever since the 1,000th US military casualty in Iraq, Temple Emanuel of Greensboro has read the names of the week's fallen soldiers each Friday night and Saturday morning prior to the mourner's prayer.  Rabbi Fred Guttman and I decided to start this after a local TV station refused to air a special on the war which would scroll all 1,000 names at the end of the broadcast.  They claimed it was unpatriotic.  Unpatriotic?  Years later, this is hard to believe or understand.  Those of us who have been to a military funeral, as Rabbi Guttman and I did at a local church, know that remembering and paying tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice cannot and must not be taken lightly.  Had there been more reports of casualties, had the names scrolled nightly on major networks as they did during my earliest years when the Vietnam War was being fought, perhaps the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan would have been more in the public conscience than it has been.  This may be the first time in American history that our country waged war while the vast majority of the public paid little or no attention to what was going on.

Not at our Temple.  Reading names was not a political statement.  It was a sacred reminder that those sacrificing their lives were not just other people's family: brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, partners and friends.  They were part of our larger American family.

In recent years, there have been fewer killed in Iraq and many more killed in Afghanistan.  We continue reading names each week with the hope that the day will come soon when "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4)

For all of our soldiers who died in Iraq we say thank you for your service and sacrifice.  Zichronam livracha, may their memories always be a blessing.

Greensboro soldier last Iraq casualty

Monday, December 19, 2011

By Tom Breen and Don Babwin,  Associated Press

Seth Perlman (Associated Press)

Photo Caption: In this photo taken Wednesday, photographs of Marine Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford, who was killed just two days into the Iraq war, sit on display at the home of his mother, Vicky Langley.

GREENSBORO — As the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on Sunday, friends and family of the first and last American fighters killed in combat were cherishing their memories rather than dwelling on whether the war and their sacrifice was worth it.

Nearly 4,500 American fighters died before the last U.S. troops crossed the border into Kuwait. David Hickman, 23, of Greensboro was the last of those war casualties, killed in November by the kind of improvised bomb that was a signature weapon of this war.

“David Emanuel Hickman. Doesn’t that name just bring out a smile to your face?” said Logan Trainum, one of Hickman’s closest friends, at the funeral where the soldier was laid to rest after a ceremony in a Greensboro church packed with friends and family.

Trainum says he’s not spending time asking why Hickman died: “There aren’t enough facts available for me to have a defined opinion about things. I’m just sad, and pray that my best friend didn’t lay down his life for nothing.”

 

He’d rather remember who Hickman was: A cutup who liked to joke around with friends. A physical fitness fanatic who half-kiddingly called himself “Zeus” because he had a body that would make the gods jealous. A ferocious outside linebacker at Northeast Guilford High who was the linchpin of a defense so complicated they had to scrap it after he graduated because no other teenager could figure it out.

Hickman was these things and more, a whole life scarcely glimpsed in the terse language of a Defense Department news release last month. Three paragraphs said Hickman died in Baghdad on Nov. 14, “of injuries suffered after encountering an improvised explosive device.”

He was more, too, than the man who bears the symbolic freight of being the last member of the U.S. military to die in a war launched in the political shadow of Sept. 11, which brought thousands of his fellow citizens out into the streets to oppose and support it. Eventually, the war largely faded from the public’s thoughts.

“There’s a lot of people, in my family included, they don’t know what’s going on in this world,” said Wes Needham, who coached linebackers at Northeast when Hickman was a student. “They’re oblivious to it. I just sit and think about it, the courage that it takes to do what they do, especially when they’re all David’s age.”

And they were mostly young. According to an Associated Press analysis of data, the average age of Americans who died in Iraq was 26. Nearly 1,300 were 22 or younger, but middle-aged people fought and died as well: some 511 were older than 35.

“I’ve trained a lot of kids. They go to college and you kind of lose track of them and forget them,” said Mike King of Greensboro Black Belt Academy, where Hickman trained in taekwondo for about eight years. “He was never like that. That smile and that laugh immediately come to mind.”

The pain is fresh for people who knew Hickman. But the years have not eased the anguish of those who lost loved ones in the war’s earliest days, when funerals were broadcast live on local television, before the country became numb to the casualty count.

Vicky Langley’s son, Marine Pvt. Jonathan Lee Gifford, was killed just two days into the war. More than eight years later she sits in her Decatur, Ill., home, surrounded by photographs of him and even a couple of paintings of him in his dress uniform that total strangers created and sent her.

She said she doesn’t concern herself with thoughts about the cost of the war and whether it was worth the life of her son and all the others who died.

“Only the Iraqi people can answer that,” she said.

She thinks of her son constantly. She recalls the first day of kindergarten and how she came home and “turned on every appliance I could (because) it was just so quiet without him.” She remembers how as a young man he would call her, without fail, when the first snow of the year started to fall. She still hears the knock at her door at 11 at night, and the chaplain telling her that her 30-year-old son had been killed in Iraq.

And she sees him in the 4-year-old daughter he left behind, who is now 12. Lexie Gifford’s thin frame and face are miniature versions of her father’s, her smile a replica of his. She has the same slow, I’ll-get-there-when-I-get-there walk.

And who, for a reason nobody understands, a while back started popping frozen French fries in her mouth just like her dad used to do.

As the last troops prepared to leave Iraq, Langley was getting ready.

“I’ll probably sit and cry,” said Langley, 58. “I’ll be happy for the ones you can be happy for and sad for the ones you are sad for.”

Langley’s life has been one catastrophe after another since her son died. The next year her husband died. Then months later, doctors told her the reason she was feeling poorly was that her kidneys had shut down. That was followed by a fall and a broken back. Today, as she waits for her name to come up on a list for a kidney transplant, she gets around the house she shares with her mother in a motorized scooter.

The one thing she doesn’t have, she said, is guilt. Though she talked her son out of enlisting in the military a couple of times over the years, the reasons began and ended with concerns about the safety for her only child.

But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, she knew there would be no talking him out of enlisting. Besides, she said, “If I was young enough I would have gone in, too.”

And even though the country’s mood was much different in 2009 when Hickman joined the Army, he had no doubts about his decision, Trainum said.

“When I talked with him on the phone a week before, he wasn’t unhappy about where he was or regretting being there at all,” Trainum said. “It was just going to work for him, and he was looking forward to getting his work done and getting home.”

Hickman, Gifford and the others left behind parents and spouses and children such as Lexie, whose memories of her Marine father are what one might expect of a girl who was four when she last saw him.

“He popped out of a Christmas box,” she said, of the Christmas just before Gifford was deployed, when he hid inside a large box to surprise his daughter. “He was tall. He had brown hair. He was nice.”

The losses linger for people who saw the flag-draped coffins come home.

“I used to watch all the war stories on TV, you know,” said Needham, Hickman’s old coach. “But since this happened to David, I can’t watch that stuff anymore. I just think: That’s how he died.”

New Orleans Trip - Day 4

I wish we did not have to leave.  In three days, we were able to accomplish so much.  Yet, there is still much left to do.  People will ask me how much longer they think we will need to keep returning to New Orleans.  My answer: we plan on coming until we are told not to anymore.  When I mention this to the people we meet in New Orleans, they say: "you may never hear that from us."  By most estimates, there is still well over a decade of volunteer work left.

This is hard to believe until you see it yourself.  The places that you need to see are not in downtown New Orleans.  Yet, they are also not tucked away.  The starkest examples can be found by going to St. Bernard Parish (to the east of New Orleans) and the Lower Ninth Ward.

We spent the few hours that we had before our 2:15 pm flight volunteering in the Lower Ninth Ward.  The Florida contingent brought us to our work site, yet they did not work that morning as they had a long bus ride home ahead of them.  The 20 teens from Greensboro and Roanoke met Linda Jackson, the President of the Lower Ninth Ward Homeowners' Association.

We met Linda at her house.  She briefly told us that where we were standing used to be houses as far as the eye could see.  That is no longer the case.  When the eastern wall of the Industrial Canal collapsed, water poured through the entire area ripping homes from their foundations and tossing them about.  Everything was underwater.  To this day, 1500 people are still unaccounted for.  And despite the few houses that survived and the exotic looking new homes constructed by Brad Pitt's Make It Right group, I would not argue with anyone who claimed that the Lower Ninth Ward was Ground Zero of the flooding that submerged New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  To this day, much of the area looks like it did only weeks after the waters subsided and the debris was removed.

Linda explained to us that the government attempted to exercise imminent domain over the Lower Ninth Ward.  Why?  The Lower Ninth was one of the poorest areas of New Orleans, of Louisiana, of the entire US prior to Katrina.  Crime, drugs, and other societal problems were well-known there.  The government's idea was to take the land and turn it into an industrial zone.  But the Lower Ninth was home to its families for generations.  Linda reminded us of the importance of land.  If you have land, she said, you have a stakehold, you have power.  She, and hundreds of other families, were not about to give up what was theirs.  A few attorneys came to New Orleans as volunteers.  They were from other big cities: Washington, New York, etc.  They offered to help defend the homeowners of the Lower Ninth Ward.  When these attorneys were told that they were not licensed to practice in Lousiana, they sat for the bar exam.  Linda expressed to us her thanks for their work.

To understand the Lower Ninth Ward post-Katrina, you have to see this sculpture which is located on the median as you come off the bridge over the Industrial Canal into the neighborhood:

The central (red) structure is a house.  It is just a shell and may represent the homes that used to be there, the homes that were destroyed, the homes that needed to be gutted, the homes that are being rebuilt... you name it.  The blue posts on the left represent the rising waters which flooded the area.  There are chairs on the right (and one on the porch inside the central structure not visible from this angle).  These chairs represent how the people of New Orleans have front porches, unlike many of the cities we know nowadays where we only have back porches.  A back porch is for privacy.  A front porch is for community.  It means you know your neighbors, and know them well.  These chairs are empty, waiting for so many friends and family to return home.  6+ years later, the waiting continues.

Our task that Sunday morning was to clean up a property lot that had overgrown with weeds.  This seems like such an easy task.  Grab a weed-whacker and get to work, right?  The problem is that there aren't any weed-whackers.  The tools we had were rudimentary hand weed cutters.  They belong to Linda and she has a few dozen of them.  That's what she can store in her house.  You can't store dozens of lawn mowers there.  And a lawn mower wouldn't have stood a chance against the weeds that we were cutting, some of which were over 7 feet tall.  It took our group of 20 teens (and two of our chaperones) nearly two hours to clear the lot that we were assigned to.  My hands still have blisters on them.

It was rewarding to work on this project and finish it.  However, the work that we did was critical in ways that our students heard directly from Linda.  She told us how lots with overgrown weeds are subject to fines of $100 a day.  That is a hefty sum, especially when your house is no longer there and you live elsewhere.  And you are poor, or old or infirm, or all of the above.  If the fees add up, the city just confiscates your property.  We worked that day to help a family, maybe more than one family, avoid this fate.

Like everything else we did, our work on Day 4 was far from easy.  As we finished, we looked around and saw dozens if not more lots that needed similar care.  In situations like that, it would be understandable to stand back and say "this job is just too big, too complicated, and not worth it."  Honestly, I have never heard that from anyone in New Orleans.  Nor have I heard it from the students that have come on our trips over the past four years.  Instead, I see people, little by little, rolling up their sleeves, working hard, and sharing messages of hope.

There will be more posts on our trip to New Orleans in the coming weeks and beyond featuring pictures and other links.  I want to end this post by expressing my gratitude: to the supporters of this program, to the congregations that have participated, to the individuals and organizations that we consult and work with, to the people of New Orleans, and to the students who dedicated their time and presence to making a difference in the lives of others.  For those who are reading these postings who do not belong to our Temples, or who are from places beyond the "borders" of the Jewish community, please know that these service learning projects are highly replicable.  Feel free to be in touch if you want a sounding board for your ideas.

New Orleans Trip - Day 3

Our third day in New Orleans is what most expect from a work-mitzvah trip.  We arrived early in the morning at the site of a house that we would be building.  This year, we chose to work with Habitat for Humanity.  The walls were already up, as was the roof.  However, there was still much to be done.  How many of our group had ever done contruction before?  was the question that Nicole, our site supervisor, asked.  Only a few hands went up; those who had worked with Habitat on prior trips to New Orleans or even back home.  Most of us would be learning our skills "on the job."  By the end of the day, we would not only master hammering, putting up siding, building and installing a staircase, attaching boards to roof structures (to name a few of the tasks), but we would also help someone get closer to moving home.

Our building day coincides with Shabbat.  When we go to New Orleans, we do so as a Jewish group.  So, why are we building on Shabbat?  This question is asked each year.  Simply stated, if we were back home, we would not do this.  But, our time in New Orleans is limited.  The days that we can build on are also limited.  Friday is out since that is the day we focus on environmental restoration.  Years ago, we used to build on Sundays.  These days, no one builds on Sundays.  This is a sign that the urgency of the first few years post-Katrina have passed.  Of course, the need is still present.  So, we build on Shabbat.

And we do our respect and honor Shabbat.  We had a Shabbat service, complete with a Torah study session, in the house we were building, transforming the bayit (house) we were building into a temporary beit knesset (synagogue).  We spoke of Jacob's dream of a ladder and angels going up and down.  Are there angels in the Jewish tradition?  Certainly.  I was sitting among them that morning.  They were teens with hammers in their hands, busy doing God's work here on earth.

There was a special ruach (spirit) that we brought to our prayers and left as a permanent blessing for those who will live in the house we helped build.  After our workday finished, we wrote the words of Shema on one of the interior beams with our signatures (in Hebrew and/or English) and the names of our respective congregations.

That day, we worked together with two future Habitat homeowners, Judy and Tyrone.  Habitat requires that those who will purchase their homes also put in over 300 hours of "sweat equity).  I heard Judy's story, how she had sought refuge in the Superdome to ride out Katrina.  She was there for 6 grueling days before she was transported elsewhere.  Her apartment did not flood, but her life was so profoudly impacted by what she experienced.  She was so grateful for the work our teens were doing and the time that they dedicated to rebuilding New Orleans.

We spent the daylight hours with Habitat for Humanity.  The above picture shows our entire group and some of what we accomplished.

Yet, our day wasn't over.  After dinner, we went to the banks of the Mississippi River for a havdalah service.  The place that we chose was Woldenberg Park which is the site of the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial designed by the Israeli artist Yaakov Agam.  Like the braids of a havdalah candle, our service helped to bring our Shabbat experiences - all of them - together.  Yet, before we started, there was something that caught our attention.  Across the Mississippi River, there was a massive fire.  After our initial concern, we surmised that it was a controlled fire since there was a Fire Dept. boat parked in the middle of the River not responding.  The fire was almost like a second havdalah candle for us.  Its light was bright enough and I felt some of the heat of the blaze even though it was a significant distance from where we were standing.  Later that night, I looked up what had been happening.  In summary, this bonfire was part of a celebration in the city of Algiers.  What made this particular fire so meaningful is that part of what was being burned was an art installation called Floodwall that had been donated by the artist Jana Napoli.  The exhibition was made up of 700 dresser drawers that had been collected after Hurricane Katrina.  Think of what dresser drawers represent to us: our memories, our belongings, our dearest keepsakes, and so much more.  I never saw this exhibition but apparently it toured the US and the world for years.  As we stood on the banks of the Mississippi declaring that there is a difference between Shabbat and the rest of the week, between sacred and profane, the drawers of Floodwall were ignited and burned brightly.  In one of the articles I read, Ms, Napoli remarked that she wanted "...the public to participate in a collective final release of Katrina woes."  We surely did.  What an unforgettable havdalah!

Our next stop was at Mid City Rock 'n' Bowl, a New Orleans institution.  On the one hand, we bowled for an hour.  On the other hand, and this may be hard to picture, there was a band of the full stage next to the lanes.  We have heard many bands there over the years, but this year was a treat - Sgt. Peppers Beatles Tribute Band.  When the band opened, they looked just like the Fab Four did when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  They setlist for that part of the show was the early music of the Beatles.  We only stayed for a few songs of their second set which they did dressed in Sgt. Peppers outfits.  Everyone was dancing: our group, other groups, young people, old people.  It was hard to leave, but it was after 11 PM when we left for the hotel.

We had awoken 19 hours earlier and had done so much.  As the words which end the Abbey Road album so beautifully delare: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."  We had given so much.  What was also true is that we had gained so much.

New Orleans Trip 2011 - Day 2

Of all of the programs that we do in New Orleans, what we do during day 2 is the hardest to explain.  Today's work was dedicated to environmental restoration.  When I tell others that we are doing this, the response usually is "that's really important."  I concur.  However, with only a few days in New Orleans, why spend the day doing environmental work?  To do what is necessary, we wind up going to a remote location without any interact with the people of New Orleans.  We spend the day cutting down large stalks of grass and then replanting them in mud on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

Truth be told, on our first two trips in 2008 and 2009 environmental work was not on our radar screen.  Then, in 2010, the Gulf was impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.  That fall and again this year, we have devoted a day to working on environmental projects.

We don't go to the Gulf of Mexico or clean up any oil.  Rather, we drive about 45 minutes westward to an area known as the Bonnet Carre Spillway.  It was a beautiful day.  The skies were clear but it was a bit colder than it was when we volunteered last year in October.  What else was different?  Last winter saw record snow fall in the northern regions of the US.  The Mississippi River was swollen and threatening to flood major cities.  So, for the first time in decades, the Army Corps of Engineers opened major spillways along the Mississippi including the Bonnet Carre Spillway.  This allowed massive amounts of water to be diverted sparing cities such as New Orleans from catastrophic floods.


We worked in the same area last year, cutting down grass from one area and replanting it.  It doesn't sound glorious and the work is tiring and dirty.  What amazed me is that what we planted last year had done its job.  The grass was preventing erosion and allowing silt to accumulate, providing a protective barrier which keeps salt water from invading fresh water area and killing off cypress trees and damaging other areas that are critical to stopping future environmental disasters.

I mentioned earlier that this was not an easy project to describe.  Yet, if you ask the students we worked with this year, they will tell you that what they did was quite meaningful.  They know about environmental concerns mostly because they hear about them.  By going to these areas, they were able to see dead cypress trees with their own eyes.  They were also able to do something about it with their own hands.

Following our day of work, we returned to the hotel to prepare for Shabbat.  The transition to Shabbat was so beautiful with everyone dressing up for services and dinner at the Gates of Prayer congregation in Metairie.  I could write pages about Gates of Prayer and Rabbi Bob Loewy.  Their hospitality towards our groups over the years has been extraordinary.  We were welcomed during services and had a tasty and filling dinner of Louisiana dishes.  Jackie and Dan Silverman were there and I enjoyed reconnecting with them.  Following dinner, the community shaliach spoke about the Maccabiah Games.  We concluded our meal with Birkat HaMazon the traditional blessing following meals.

For Shabbat dessert, we went to Cafe Du Monde for beignets.  What a sweet way to celebrate Shabbat.

New Orleans Trip 2011 - Day 1

After months of planning and anticipation, we are back in the Big Easy.  This is our fourth tikkun olan/mitzvah work trip to New Orleans.  We started coming here with Jewish teens in the fall of 2008, 3 years after Katrina and the subsequent flooding of Greater New Orleans.

When I say "we," I mean Temple Emanuel of Greensboro and Temple Sinai of North Miami Beach.  I should not forget the American Hebrew Academy and Temple Emanuel of Winston-Salem, NC who have teamed up with us on earlier trips (and surely will be among our partners in the future).  But "we" really refers to Jewish teens from our respective congregations.  We had a choice years ago: who should make up the participants on a trip like this?  Our answer: we wanted to do this as a service learning experience for older high school students, providing them a engaging and meaningful ways to continue their Jewish involvement by doing hands-on work and giving back.  By the way, this is only one component of an overall approach to teen involvement.

This program was a recipient of the 2011 Fain Award given by the Religious Action Center of the Union for Reform Judaism for outstanding work in social action.

This year's group is our largest group ever.  We have a total of 31 teen volunteers (15 from Greensboro, 5 from Roanoke, VA, and 11 from North Miami Beach) and 5 chaperones (including me and Rabbi David Young from Temple Sinai of North Miami Beach).  A videographer is accompanying us for the first time and the plan is to show our documentary at the URJ's Biennial in a few weeks time.


December 1, 2011 - The group from Greensboro and Roanoke left North Carolina arriving in New Orleans at around 11 AM.  We were met at the airport by the Florida group.  Brave souls... they took an overnight bus-ride from South Florida to southern Louisiana.

Before we got to work, we did a few overview tours.  Our first tour was with Julie Schwartz who took us on a panoramic tour of New Orleans.  Along the way, we learned about the history, culture, and contours of New Orleans.  She also spoke with us about local Jewish history.  The main difference between this tour and ones that we have taken in the past is that you no longer see devastation.  In fact, Julie mentioned that tours used to be called "disaster tours" or "Katrina tours."  They are now referred to as "renaissance tours."  When we go to the Lower 9th Ward (which we did not see yesterday), we will surely see many reminders of what happened 6+ years ago and the immense work that remains.  But our tour focused on what has been rebuilt and how New Orleans of today is truly "back."

Our next stop was Tulane University.  We were met by a number of Jewish undergrads including Carley Regal who went on our trip last year and is a freshman at Tulane now.  Her dad and brother are on this year's trip.  The highlight of our Tulane tour was an extended visit to the new Hillel Jewish student center.  As a former Hillel Rabbi, I was so taken by the space and opportunities that this center for Jewish life offers.  Corey Smith, Hillel's Associate Director, showed us around.  Jewish life at Tulane is thriving and I was glad that our teens saw this.  In fact, Tulane and Tulane Hillel have been regular stops on our trips to New Orleans.  No matter where they go to college, I want to make sure that they know about and connect with their campus Hillels.

Our evening culminated with 2 hours of volunteer work at the New Orleans Mission.  Well over 150 men and women were there for dinner.  Many of them live on the streets and might otherwise not have eaten.  Our students served dinner, helped out, and worked as a team to make everything go smoothly.  After a full day of traveling, they have started to give back.  Giving back will be our main focus over the next three days.

Before we left the Mission, one of the organizers told us his story.  He had been in prison and is now in the process of rebuilding his life.  How is he doing this?  By helping others.  His story was moving; perhaps one of our teens will write about it.  But, the message behind his story was: do what you can to give back and help others.