The caller left no name; I believe the caller ID field displayed "unknown number."
I didn't transcribe it. But the words said, more or less, that the caller thought I had better not show up for the upcoming service to dedicate Duke University's expanded memorial plaques honoring alumni and alumnae who have died serving in our military.
The service, he said, "was for heroes, not for people who have bragged about opposing a war." If I showed up, the caller said, "we" (meaning people of like minds to him, I suppose) would ask that I be escorted from the service.
It was an invitation I didn't think I could pass up. I put the event, which I'd been undecided about attending just because of other commitments, on my calendar.
I hope it was more than just gut reaction, although it did occur to me it wouldn't be a good idea for anyone to think I could be so easily discouraged from attending an important event.
It was more because I thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect on the rancor that still must lurk in some quarters from differences of decades ago, and on the difference between policy disagreements and respect for courage and commitment.
Let me note that I have no recollection of -- nor do I feel any inclination toward -- boasts about war protests. For one thing, although I'll acknowledge deeply felt and privately articulated reservations about the Vietnam War, my main public role during that period was trying to ensure relatively even-handed journalism in The Duke Chronicle at a time when many of the staff carried potent ideological baggage.
And in the years since, newspapers I've edited supported, if with reservations, the onset of hostilities in both Gulf Wars. On the other hand, in the years since many supporters and even architects of our Vietnamese role have come to see it as a misadventure. Bob Woodward and Gordon M. Goldstein write about two of those -- Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy -- on the Perspectives page today.
No doubt, to greater or lesser degrees many of us did fall prey, amid the amped-up volume and rabid recriminations of the Vietnam era, to lose sight of the worthy, even noble, motives of those who served a policy we questioned.
I've had and taken many opportunities in the years since to honor and affirm those motives, and the memorial service Friday was another.
Those whose names are on the plaques lining a low wall next to the Duke Chapel characterized the "service before self" that is at the heart of Duke's mission, President Dick Brodhead said Friday.
Eric Shinseki, who has a master's degree in English from Duke and who, following a long and distinguished military career is now secretary of veterans affairs, echoed that. The names of those honored, he said, "personify duty, honor and courage in service to something larger than self."
Shinseki, in citing the words of a 19th-century British statesman and philosopher, prompted me to think about how those passionately on different ideological planes may often overlook the fact that which divides us is less profound than that which draws us together.
Shinseki quoted Edmund Burke's famous observation that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
That quote in large black type emblazoned the back page one week in the late 1960s of The North Carolina Anvil, a decidedly left-leaning alternative weekly published in Durham for several years.
People of differing viewpoints can find some common ground in that thought.
And we can affirm the importance, the necessity, of saluting those who might have followed a different path to uphold that dictum. As this newspaper editorialized a few days ago:
"Any debate over the validity of war carried out in the questioning atmosphere of academia or elsewhere ought not to detract from the bravery and patriotism of those who chose to fight, or went stoically when their country called."
Drop by Duke's Memorial Quadrangle. You'll be deeply moved.
Bob Ashley is editor of The Herald-Sun. Contact him at (919) 419-6678 or by e-mail at bashley@heraldsun.com.
