Reflections on a Post-DADT Veterans Day
Time, if nothing else, has given me license to pen some thoughts about Veterans Day. After all, I have had the honor and privilege of being entitled to wear the uniform of the United States Army for more than half the years that Veterans Day, earlier called Armistice Day, has been in existence.
President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed November 11, 1919, as Armistice Day to honor America’s fallen during World War I which had ended on the Western Front in France at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the year before. In 1954, President (and Five Star Army General) Dwight Eisenhower signed a law expanding the meaning of November 11th to include the honoring of ALL veterans, and Armistice Day then became Veterans Day.
I had the chance to visit Arlington Cemetery early one morning this week. The day was beautiful and clear with a low sun shining through still leafy trees showing off their golden and rust colored hues and shading the rows of headstones representing our honored veterans at rest. A beautiful place yet very poignant and sad.
Another funeral was in progress. The newly fallen veteran was probably a senior Army officer, judging by the horse-drawn caisson awaiting a flag-draped coffin still inside the Fort Myer Chapel and the presence of a large “Old Guard” Honor Guard and the full Army Band forming outside. I wondered, looking back at the cemetery’s headstones, just which and how many of them represented veterans who had been secretly LGBT while alive, and who might have been denied the honor of final rest at Arlington had their truth become known.
My thoughts returned to a day when, as a teenager driving through a small Pennsylvania town with my family, I saw a monument in the town square dedicated to our war-dead veterans. I read the inscription and have not forgotten it since: "They gave their young lives so that democracy might grow old -- and become fully inclusive." Of course, the last four words were not in the original inscription because it was written years before the civil and gay rights movements even began. But, if I had my way, they would be added now as we continue along our path toward a more perfect Union.
This Veterans Day I am grateful to be a member of the SLDN family, a team dedicated to attaining full equality for ALL our veterans, whether they serve currently on active duty or in the reserve components, if they are former service members, or if retired. Unfortunately, even after this year’s repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" (DADT), some veterans are still treated differently from their comrades, by law. SLDN will not rest until ALL our veterans receive equal benefits for their equal service and equal sacrifice in defending our country.
11-11-11 By COL. E. A. (Andy) Leonard, USA (ret.) and Co-Chair of SLDN’s Military Advisory Council |
