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Honoring the Life and Service of Army Major Alan Rogers This Memorial Day

As we approach Memorial Day, 2011, friends are starting to talk about plans for the long weekend. My mind hasn’t quite made the jump to picnics and pool parties just yet. Right now, I am thinking about a visit I will be making to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the grave of my friend, Major Alan Rogers, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in January, 2008.

Alan Rogers was a friend and colleague who I knew through my work at SLDN, and with American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER.) Alan was an exceptional person in so many ways. He was kind, he was gentle, he was smart. He had a deep faith in God and in man. He was an accomplished professional but very humble, and cared much more for others than for himself. I feel blessed to have known him.

Last year, I decided my daughters were old enough to visit Arlington with me on Memorial Day weekend, to join me in honoring Alan’s memory and to begin the process of understanding the human cost of war.

On the drive down George Washington Parkway with the windows rolled down that hot and humid DC morning, the girls colored pictures to leave on Alan’s grave. We rode alongside dozens of motorcycles, and I talked to my girls about Rolling Thunder, and why they ride to DC every Memorial Day. I talked to them about the importance of remembering that military action comes with a high cost, and that we must never forget those who serve our country in uniform – especially those who give their lives for their country.

When we arrived at Arlington, my daughters and I saw the thousands of gravestones lined up in rows, in perfect military precision. We saw tourists, of course. And we also saw widows barely out of their teens, sitting devoted and devastated beside fresh graves. We saw parents laden with coolers full of soda pop, sunscreen, hats , lawn chairs, and umbrellas, coming to spend the hot day sitting by the graves of children who should have outlived them, but instead rest beneath the emerald green grass of Arlington.

I explained to the girls that every headstone marked the burial place of a U.S. service member or family member. I explained that all who are buried at Arlington gave some measure of their lives to our country, and some died for our country. As the saying goes, all gave some; but some gave all.

At Alan’s grave, as my daughters placed the pictures they had colored for him by his headstone, I contemplated the depth of his sacrifice for our country. In the end, Alan gave his life, but even before that, he gave up an important part of his life in having to live under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He sacrificed the opportunity to be fully honest about his life, and the opportunity to have a partner or husband with whom to share his life. I am sure that deep down inside he must have resented the additional sacrifice that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” required of him, though I can’t say I ever heard him complain about it.

But I knew that he opposed the law and thought the Army we both loved would be better off without it. He even wrote his master’s thesis about why the Army would be better for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” much to my chagrin as an SLDN lawyer who was worried that this choice of topic might draw a little too much attention to him.

I remember kneeling to pray briefly by Alan’s graveside while the girls ran around in the thick, green grass of Section 60. I remember thinking about the steady progression our country was making toward repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and telling Alan that I hoped we were almost there.

Six months later, in December of 2010, Congress passed the law to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” setting a process in motion that will ultimately end a long and shameful chapter in American history. In the days following the Senate vote and the President’s signing of the legislation, people who fought over the course of so many years to bring an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” celebrated and shed tears of joy. We also cried tears of sadness for all the lives shattered by discrimination against gay and transgender people in the military over the course of our nation’s history. I thought of Alan often during those days. I felt his presence, felt him smiling down on all of us.

This Sunday morning after Mass, I will bring my girls to Arlington to visit Alan’s grave once again. I hope they’ll color him some pretty new pictures. I want them to have occasion to remember the real reason their school is closed and mom and dad are off work on Monday. It’s not to mark the start of summer. It’s not about picnics and pool parties (though who doesn’t like those?) It’s about cherishing the memories of those who have died for our country. I will kneel by Alan’s grave and say a little prayer, and thank him for pulling for SLDN and the team in the final stretch, from his perch up there in Heaven. We’re almost there, Alan.

05-25-11 By Sharon E. Debbage Alexander, Captain, United States Army, (1993-2003) |