WWII memorial

I just got back from the D.C. area, where I was at a conference of people who lost fathers in WWII (American WWII Orphans' Network [AWON]). The centerpiece of the conference was the dedication of the new WWII memorial. If I had to choose only one memory to hold onto from the dedication ceremony, it would the white-haired couples jitterbugging in the aisles to the Coast Guard's "Masters of Swing" big-band music. Vets, energized by their only national tribute since they returned from WWII almost sixty years ago, kicked up their heels on the mall where about 150 thousand of us gathered.
When I made my way through the crowds to the concession stands, people were coming up to vets in wheelchairs, on walkers or canes, and asking to shake their hands or pose with them for pictures. People were standing in the concession line rapt at the vets' stories. A man I stood in front of flew a B-24 "liberator" over Italy. "We didn't know enough to be scared," he said. "I was only 17; I just had to go do it."
The lines for hot dogs and soda were so long we had to wait forty-five minutes in the hot sun. The pilot had diabetes and a yellow tinge to his skin; another vet near us had oxygen tubes coming out his nose. Both of them refused to go ahead of me and my friend; we tried again and again, but they'd take no favors. And although they loved telling us about their service, they didn't want any praise. It embarrassed them, because they truly believe that the friends they saw die did most of the work. That's who they'd come for. "I still wake up in the middle of the night," one vet told me, "and wonder where they are."
Typifying this attitude was a small, wizened Japanese-American man who kept his head down in the elevator coming down from our hotel rooms the next morning. His wife and daughter seemed eager to talk, though, and told us they were headed off to the White House. Surprised because it was Sunday morning, I said, "They tour today?"
"No," the daughter said, and pointed to her father. "He's road-rage."
"Oh my gosh!" I said, putting out my hand to the vet. President Bush had mentioned him in his speech yesterday at the dedication. After his buddy was gunned down beside him, this guy had stormed up a hill after the shooters and singlehandedly taken out a machine-gun nest of Germans. He'd been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and when Bush had personally congratulated him prior to the ceremony, the man said it was nothing, just something that would be called "road rage" today.
This was the essence of the dedication: the wisdom and joy of the vets. They united us for a few hours, so that even the politicians knew enough to keep Iraq and campaigning out of their speeches and focus on the sacrifice of a generation whose likes we won't see again.