HAWK

About me:

"I MAY NOT HAVE GONE WHERE I INTENDED TO GO, BUT I THINK I HAVE ENDED UP WHERE I'M SUPPOSE TO BE''.

I've been through Hell,and back again, and the journey has been wild and wonderful, with lots of successes and failures while trying to preserve my Irish and Southern heritage, (and keep it alive). I have viewed most events in my life as learning experiences, and have endured a lot of pain and adversity, which tends to teach us more (especially when it becomes hindsight and memory). I am a father of 2 boys and 2 girls, am a veteran, and a flag-waving American with Christian beliefs in God, our American traditions, the Constitution and Amendments, and Our history "as it really happened". However, I am ashamed of four specific events of our history, namely; (1)The way our politicians ended the Vietnam War, {which they got us into in the first place}, by abruptly pulling us out leaving several million S.Vietnamese people exposed and unprotected to be massacred. That damned, tragic misjudgement also caused 58,320 brave, young Americans to die cheating them out of the joys of living a full and normal lifetime, and thousands more to be wounded mentally and physically, and sent us Nam-era vets into a eternal damnation; (2) The way our Country stole everything from and massacred thousands of Native Americans in the process of our conquest of North America; (3) Enslaving African Americans, and later denying them equal rights as free human beings for a century; and, (4) The incarceration of loyal Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor simply because they were of Japanese descent.-----------One of the things that still prevails in my memory of my childhood is the public water fountain near the tennis courts up a little ways from the old gazebo at Riverside Park in Lynchburg, VA. There was a sign on it that read, "Whites Only". I remember it vividly and as a little white boy didn't think it was right, that all folks couldn't get a drink of water if they wanted one. What a damned shame; just how disgraceful can a City be? But that was in the 1950's, and I suppose folks just didn't know any better. America and Virginia have come a long ways in correcting its ills in the humanities, thank God. Bottomline, I stand proud of Our Country despite those past mistakes in history, and I hope my children will grow to love Her as much as I do.

"I stood up, I showed up. I stepped forward, I raised my right hand. I stood in the gap, I walked in the fire. I did not run, I did not hide. I did not dodge, I did not evade. Consequently . . . I have nothing to prove, no one to convince. Those who matter already know. Those who don't, never will."

I was a soldier. I am a soldier. I'll always be a soldier.

In closing, if you have read this, regardless of your own persona, I sincerely hope you have a great life EVERYDAY. Harris aka "Hawk", a *Three Percenter".