Veterans deserve daily respect

By Alonzo Weston

Veterans Day may be over but that doesn’t mean we should stop honoring those who served our country. These men and women deserve our respect year-round, not just for one day or week.

These folks sacrificed their safety, and in some cases their lives, for all of us to have freedom. We can honor them with parades and free lunches but they deserve much more.

Those old men you see barely walking around with veteran ball caps and some with artificial limbs were once the strongest men this country had to offer.

I went to church once and ushered with Bill Perks, a World War II veteran. In between our ushering duties, Bill and I would stand in the church foyer and talk. We became friends enough that I could visit him at his home in the South Side. Bill, a normally calm and stoic man, broke down in tears as we sat on his front porch one summer afternoon drinking iced tea. He remembered the people he saw in the concentration camps. After all these years, their gaunt, emaciated looks still haunted him.

“How could a man do this to another man?” Bill spoke through sobs. War is hell and that was the hell he lived with until the day he died.

Lawrence Banks, another WWII veteran I knew hid that pain well. He was a large, jovial man who always carried a smile on his face and offered a hearty, sincere handshake. You would never know the pain and racism he faced during the war. A trucker over the Burma road during the war, he not only had to fight the enemy abroad but also the disrespect and racism at home. Neither broke his spirit. He was a lovable and gracious man to the end.

As a kid, I saw broken-down old drunks in my neighborhood who many of us just knew as losers and drains on society.

Years later, too much later, I found out that these men were also war veterans. They carried the scars of war and from the racism and disrespect at home. Some were Vietnam vets who when coming home were met with hate and vitriol for their role in fighting for freedom in the world. There were no ticker tape parades and warm welcomes home for them. They were called baby killers and worse for their service.

I’ve met men who were on the Bataan Death March and were prisoners of war during Korea and World War II. I worked with a man who was a helicopter machine gunner and war hero in Vietnam, but you would not know it. He was humble to a fault with a gentle heart.

These are our heroes who deserve our respect always and forever. Those kids in service today also deserve our respect. My son Alonzo Jr. is still a proud Marine after his stint in the service. When he speaks sometimes of that service, it makes me proud to know we raised a strong, dedicated military man. I could not have done some of the life-threatening things my son endured. I’m forever proud of him.

So yes, honor and respect the veterans in your family and our midst. They deserve this year-round.