Thank you for our freedom

I was going through a box of things in a storage space under the stairs in my home and I found (among other things) a photo copy of an op-ed piece that I wrote and submitted to the Record Journal. It was printed on September 4, 2000. I couldn’t know at the time that a year and a week later it would be Tuesday, September 11, 2001 and my perspective would shift once again.

Below is the text of what I wrote that day. Today as the snow falls I think of the holidays.

To every enlisted individual that cannot be home because they are serving and protecting as well as to those that made the ultimate sacrifice and will never come home again, from my family to yours, thank you for the gift of freedom that I can never repay.

 

Thank you for our freedom - Jason Zandri, Special to the Record-Journal  

Wallingford resident Jason Zandri, 31, is a computer engineer at Tek Systems in Windsor.

I am sitting here trying to figure out what it is I missed from the movie "Saving Private Ryan." Don't get me wrong. I am an avid fan of movies, I have a personal collection of over 2,400. I thought the movie was well-written, well-acted, and looked very authentic. What I tried to get out of it was the realism of the film that everyone was always talking about. It captured the atrocities of the military landings and the war itself so well, that it caused some veterans to have flashbacks of their own experiences.

I just didn't get that type of "movement" from the film. It didn't cause me to enjoy it any less, but it did make me think about some things. As I sit here between two holidays, Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, honoring all of those who served our country, I felt guilty about not getting the "movement" out of the film that I had heard and read about from so many different people.

I felt that I should have been able to.

I then suddenly began to realize why I could not get the depth of emotion out of the movie that so many others did. I really do not have a strong enough connection to ANY war to have any solid emotion for it, one way or the other.

I have worked so many hours straight and been so busy that I didn't have enough time to stop and eat, and although I was "starving," I really, truly don't have a clue what it is to be hungry like someone that has no food. I have no proper point of reference for the tragedies of any war that had transpired.

I was born in 1969. Even though I was a child during the last chapters of the Vietnam War, my earliest recollections of it were from reading the veteran's stories about it in the newspapers that I delivered. To me, that was the last "significant" war we were really involved with as a country, heart and soul, for or against. Everything after that, our true involvement was limited. The losses and the sacrifices were the same, it's just that our involvement as a nation was not as strong.

I still was trying to figure out why I was not as sensitive to the images.

There had to be a little more to it than just "no proper point of reference." A new movie has come out that answered that question for me - "The Patriot." Most Americans would be forced to admit that they view the Fourth of July as a holiday of picnics and fireworks. Yes we all know it is in celebration of our independence, but its meaning today is far different than what it was. That is not because it is not important to anyone but more so the fact that all of us are so far removed from the horror, tragedy and loss of THAT war, that while we celebrate our freedom we FORGET what was involved to secure it.

I am almost certain that as we moved away from that period in time, the veterans of that important war felt the same way that today's veterans think; people today just don't seem to realize just exactly what we went through to secure the freedoms that we enjoy and take for granted.

I am not justifying the reasoning behind it, but coming to realize the error.

Allowing myself to put my mind in a place where I forget what was really involved. I also allowed myself a little bit of "slack" due to the fact that all the while I was growing up I never had to worry about the possibility of losing my freedom or going to war, but I quickly pulled that slack back. It is exactly because of the dedication and sacrifices of the men and women of the armed forces, and their families, that I could be granted the luxury of not having to worry.

To every veteran of any war I say this. On behalf of Generation X, and the Boomers too, thank you for our freedom. A freedom so well fortified that I believe in my heart and soul we will never lose it.

Rest well, knowing that our ignorance is mainly due to the fact that you have all done your duty fighting for our country so well that we will probably never again have to work that hard or bear that much personal cost to maintain our freedom.

Thank you for securing a peace, while fragile, so well-balanced that I will probably never have to live through any true hardship. Thank you for making America what it is today, more so than any politician ever did, "...land of the free and the home of the brave."

 

Copyright 2000, 2006 Record-Journal

FROM WALLINGFORD – Let’s celebrate our real heroes

As published in the Record Journal Sunday December 19, 2010
As posted via http://zandri.net/Blog/?p=955

FROM WALLINGFORD - Let's celebrate our real heroes
by Jason Zandri

A week before Thanksgiving, my neighbor David Gessert called one afternoon and asked me if I was going to be around on Wednesday. He mentioned that he and the neighbors were going to be having a little get together for U.S. Army Sgt. Jeff Sirois who was to be returning to Wallingford after nearly a year in Afghanistan. They were planning to line up along the final leg his travel route and wave the American flag and hold up some signs to welcome him home.

I thanked him for thinking of me and I apologized for being unable to attend. I had recently started a new job which requires me to go into New York City on a daily basis, a change from my previous job which offered me some flexibility for working from home some of the time.

When I think about how much attention in general America pays to which celebrity is cheating on whom and how long Bristol Palin was going to last on "Dancing With the Stars" it made me even more upset that I couldn't make it that day.

As I was thinking of a topic to put together for this final article of mine before Christmas my thoughts went back to this event, a simple little gesture by family, friends and neighbors to welcome home this member of our armed forces from his recent deployment overseas.

We as a nation simply don't celebrate our true heroes nearly enough.

We parade the winning World Series team down the main boulevard of whichever city they hail from for tickertape parades (and more times than I'd like to admit, this is the Canyon of Heroes, the lower section Broadway in the Financial District of New York City).

I read a lot of news stories: nearly everything in the Record Journal and a volume more from newspapers across the country online. Over the course of the year I've read stories about someone who saved animals from a burning animal rescue or another who heard an elderly woman's cries for help and called 911.

Many of these stories called these people "heroes". I absolutely agree that the actions that these people have taken are positively heroic but that is the maximum extent of credit I am willing to give them. You show me a police officer, a firefighter, an EMT, a member of our armed forces that puts their uniform on, pats their children on the head, kisses their spouse good-bye, and who puts themselves in harm's way in an effort to make us safe and to preserve our way of life here in America for all, and I will show you a real hero.

A message is making its way across Facebook - "This Christmas, when you're eating your dinner, smiling and laughing, remember that in another house somewhere, there's an empty chair where a Hero should be sitting. They gave up their life or are presently serving overseas so that you can sit with your family. So light a candle for the Heroes that did not make it home and for those who are still serving."

To my neighbors, the Siroises, whose house I have walked by dozens of times in nicer weather when I go for my walks downtown, thank you.

Jeff - thank you for serving our country and for protecting it.

Jen - thank you for all the support that you offer to Jeff and to your family while he is away.

To the Sirois' children - thank you for your sacrifice of time with your father.

When you take the time to stop and consider this on a finite and personal level, it gives so much more meaning to "land of the free and home of the brave."

To all the heroes - thank you. May you have the best of holidays and may you return home safely.