January 29, 2007

Where Have All The Heroes Gone? 

When we first moved to our lake here in Michigan, there was a yearly event called Winterfest. Aside from Christmas, this was hands-down the best part of that long, gray, slush-up-your-pant-leg, toe-numbing, car-door-rotting, sniffles-producing chunk of our year that Winterfest is named after. 

The first official ritual of Winterfest came in early January when everybody around the lake would dispose of their Christmas trees by simply dragging them out onto the ice and leaving them there. Before long, friendly oversized gremlins wearing parkas and sturdy boots would come along and take them away. These were members of the local Kiwanis Club, who would use our trees, gallons of green dye, snow shovels, ice augers, and a little imagination to design and build an ice golf course right out there on the frozen lake.  

Ice golf was played with a tennis ball and one club, usually a crappy old seven iron - although a few big hitters were willing to sacrifice putting accuracy to gain the backspin and subtle touch around the greens they could get from the more lofted crappy old nine.   

As soon as the ice was more than a couple of feet thick, while the Kiwanis were still painting greens and sculpting snow traps around piles of pine needles, people would take their cars and trucks out to join the snowmobiles, charging around the lake in joyful defiance of nature, common sense and insurance statistics. By the peak weekend of Winterfest, there would be helicopters and monster trucks and ice-diving exhibitions and, of course, golf tournaments. 

None of this happens any more. The standard explanation is that the winters lately haven’t been nearly as cold as they used to be, so we’re no longer sure to get enough ice. This is true, but there is another ingredient that also seems to have come into short supply: 

The heroes who made it happen. 

Last weekend our community held a tribute to a neighbor who is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. As our neighbor, we’ve mostly known Duane for the past few years as the big, smiling, gentle, bald grizzly bear, striding around the edge of the lake to get the exercise his doctor prescribed after his bypass surgery. Or we knew him as the smiling grizzly bear who would show up at the library on the Fourth of July every year to recite In Flanders Fields and sing the National Anthem in his beautiful baritone.

At his tribute, we were reminded that Duane served in the 1^st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) during World War II and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. We were reminded that he served as a decorated police detective in Ann Arbor. We were reminded that he served as president of the School Board who built the high school that has educated the kids in our community for more than 50 years. We were reminded that he served on the state governing board of the Kiwanis Club.  

We were reminded that he served in his church choirs, barber shop quartets, and in any other singing group that was in need of the joyful noise he loved to produce. We were reminded that he has served as loving patriarch to a family that has successfully modeled itself on his example of quiet strength and profound sense of duty. 

We were also reminded that he was one of those gremlins in parkas and sturdy boots who used to drag our discarded Christmas trees around the lake.

You see, along with all of the truly monumental things Duane accomplished in his life, he and a lot of other heroes like him were willing to empty their enormous reservoirs of energy into an event that really served no purpose other than adding a marvelous dash of excitement and happiness to the lives of his family, friends and neighbors. 

What a wonderful purpose.  

Unfortunately, many of us are now too busy making deals or investing our money or planning vacations or making sure we don’t miss a single episode of “The Sopranos” to organize events like Winterfest. So we’ve left this kind of work to the people like Duane who had nothing better to do with their lives than survive the Great Depression and win World War II, and pretty much build the modern world we inhabit.  

As time goes by, these folks are inevitably moving on to the Next Great Adventure, leaving behind them a void that’s not readily being filled by those of us on whose behalf they accomplished all those things. 

Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?

Copyright © 2007, Michael Ball

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