“Security can get on the nerves just as much as danger.” (Brown in Graham Greene’s The Comedians – 1965)
I am in a minority in refusing to see politicians and bureaucrats as beings before whom we, as bleating sheep, must bow the knee as if they were our wise and compassionate shepherds.
In general, I do not think they are wise, and I do not think they are compassionate.
I am in an even smaller minority in my viewing church leaders with deep disappointment in how we are responding to the current state of affairs. (But those country churches, mostly non-denominational, whose leaders still have the backbone of our forebears, have earned my respect in recent weeks.)
It has become very clear that, in general, if our founding era’s church leaders had been like those of today’s, we’d still be speaking the king’s English.
Spare me the theological expositions and explanations. Looking at the fruit tells me what I need to know. And that fruit lacks courage.
This is the context in which my respect for my father, which was already of the utmost, has in recent weeks done what I would have considered to have been impossible a mere month ago.
It has grown.
He was not a great reader or student of philosophy or theology, although he, and my mother, played a key role in preparing me to appreciate such, and more.
But he was courageous.
And he was loyal.
He loved God and he loved country and he loved home. Besides him, I can think of very few men — very few — whom I would want with me in a foxhole, or in any trial or crisis of life. One I can think of died many years ago. I still see him as he walks from his little shack up to the labor camp alongside his burro. Another, died relatively recently. I see him as he drives his truck up my driveway on a Sunday afternoon as I’m listening to the BBC on short wave radio.
I used to think I am easily impressed. I guess I’m not.
The scene: San Félix, a town on the shores of the Orinoco River. It’s about 10 P.M. on a night in the 1940’s. Communist militants and sympathizers have been active. My father and the company controller, Mr. T, have been at the town’s movie theater and are now heading to the company pickup to drive back to Palúa, the riverfront camp.
A group of about 10 men accosted them and one ran up to Mr. T and struck him in the face, knocking him down. His glasses hit the ground and cracked.
Striking a man with glasses was considered cowardly. Striking an older man, such as Mr. T, was unforgivable.
My father instinctively swung and landed his fist with a violent blow against the jaw of the perpetrator, who fell back awkwardly and heavily with a muffled thud on the dusty street. Then he realized: the man was drunk.
He looked up and saw that the other men stood, staring at him. Some were drunk, while others seemed sober, but sullen.
“Men, your friend is drunk. Otherwise, I am sure he would never have struck an older man wearing glasses. I assume you do not want to see your friend get hurt. Help him get up and return to his home! There is no need for us to fight. If you have any grievances, you must know by now that we will happily [con gusto] receive you and talk with you about it. Will you help your friend?”
As he spoke to the men, in perfect Spanish, Mr. T, following my father’s whispered commands, slowly made his way, undisturbed to the pickup, glancing back at my father, knowing that if the situation got out of hand, there would have been little for him to do to help out.
No one moved, except for the man on the ground, who rolled over on his stomach and vomited.
He clearly was not going to get up unassisted.
A man stepped forward and knelt by the fallen man, taking his left arm and wrapping it over his shoulder, “B, listen to me, I am going to stand up slowly, but I need you to hold on to me. Escúchame!” Then, looking over his shoulder, “Men, I need your help! Vengan!”
At this, the men stepped forward, almost in unison, and, having come to the area where B had fallen, strove to help the kneeling man rise along with the other, who was rapidly gaining full consciousness.
Eventually, about 5 or 6 of them accompanied the man helping B towards the south end of the town. The group, composed of individuals insistent on helping out one-by-one or two-by-two, continued southward, looking like a receding Rorschach test image. Others remained nearby, looking at Mr. T in the pickup as my father, leaning on the passenger side’s door, talked with him while also looking back, off and on, at them.
I did not learn about this incident from my father. In fact, I never heard him talk about it.
One summer, in the 1970’s, I interned at the mining office and, during my breaks, I’d visit the archives and read the dusty, decades-old memoranda submitted over the years by the general managers and controllers to the Pennsylvania home office. I came across a memorandum with a vivid description of my father’s actions many years before. The controller freely admitted, in his own writing, that my father likely saved him from great bodily harm that night in San Félix.
I know of several other such incidents involving my father, at least one of which occurred in my presence.
The circumstances for each were different. But they all pointed to one common constant: courage. A man’s refusal to be governed only by security. In doing so, he, ironically, created security for himself and for others.
We need to learn from such men again.
