Billy Coffey

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The state of our Union

Screen Shot 2014-01-27 at 3.12.12 PMThe State of the Union speech is tomorrow, at which several thousand media-types and politicians will take their accustomed places and either praise or condemn, and the other 200 million of us will offer a collective, exasperated sigh that things really have gotten this bad.

But I’ll still watch it, just as I’ve watched every State of the Union since I was ten. I’ll take my spot on the sofa and soak in every word and round of applause, every bit of analysis and rebuttal. Watching has become a tradition of mine, though politics has nothing at all to do with it. Martin Leonard Skutnik III does.

Lenny to his friends. If you’re forty and over, chances are pretty good you remember him. His face and story are likely stuck inside a dusty drawer in the back of your mind, one labeled BIG THINGS. Lenny was a big thing. Thirty-two years ago, he was maybe the biggest. And rightly so.

He was on his way to work on January 13, 1982. Just a regular guy trying to weave his regular car through regular traffic to get to his regular job. That changed when the jet fell out of the sky. Air Florida Flight 90 had taken off earlier from Washington National Airport, bound for Tampa. As Lenny neared work, the Boeing 737 struck the 14th Street Bridge and plunged into the Potomac.

Lenny was only one of hundreds of people who watched as emergency personnel worked to save the victims, one of whom was a passenger named Priscilla Tirado. Frightened and cold and exhausted, Priscilla was too weak to grab hold of a line lowered by a rescue helicopter. She flailed and began to fade. Lenny and the great throng of others watched in horror. But as the rest of them looked on helplessly, Lenny Skutnik decided to do something.

He took off his coat and boots and jumped into the icy water, swimming the thirty feet or so to where Priscilla Tirado struggled in nothing but pants and short sleeves. Lenny got her to shore. Saved her life.

Two weeks later, Ronald Reagan delivered his State of the Union. I watched it only because my parents made me. Partway into his speech, Reagan mentioned an ordinary man named Lenny, sitting in the gallery next to the First Lady.

Lenny Skutnik stood. The chamber roared.

Everyone. Citizens and media alike. Democrats and Republicans. Liberals and conservatives. All of them united for one small moment, for one small man.

That’s why I watch the State of the Union each year. Because it kindles the memory of that ordinary man who did an extraordinary thing.

And you know what? I need that reminder. We all do. The dark side of man is on display for us to see at every moment. It stares at us with each news segment from Syria or Iraq. It dares us with every profile of a political prisoner or story of the hungry and cold and oppressed. It’s as close as a click on a link or a turn of the channel. Every day, everywhere, there is proof that we are less than we should be.

It’s easy to see the bad in us, and how we’ve made such a mess of the world. That’s why people like Lenny Skutnik are so important. Not simply because of the great things they do, but because of the great thing they prove: That there is evil in us, but there is goodness in us as well.

Immeasurable, unfathomable glory. Bravery and love and heroism.

Greatness.
Screen Shot 2014-01-27 at 3.03.05 PM

Dying well

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

The shot hits me just below the chest, shattering some important organ. A lung, maybe, or an intestine. My left hand goes there. I feel the wetness through my fingers and fall to my knees—my death pose. My eyes are open (they should probably be closed, but no way am I going out like that), as is my mouth. My face holds a look of shock that says This can’t be happening, and I think that even as I drop to the grass. I’m still. I don’t even move when the grass pokes into my mouth and tickles my gums.

A skinny shadow falls over me then, and a loud voice says, “Cut.”

I raise my head. “Good?”

My daughter stands there, one hand on her hip and the other holding the camera. “That wasn’t very good, Daddy.”

My son stands next to her. He’s holding the water pistol at his hip in much the same fashion as he imagines Doc Holiday once did. “Nope,” he says. “That weren’t too good a’tall.”

“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” I tell them. “I grab my shirt like you said, I tumble over like you said, I lie there like you said. You want me to close my eyes?”

I don’t want to, but at this point I’ll do whatever it takes to have this over with. We’ve been out here in the yard for two hours. Making a movie, my daughter says. This week, that’s what she wants to do when she grows up. I said fine, let’s make a movie. I figured it couldn’t be worse than last week, back when she wanted to be a veterinarian. I don’t even want to talk about that.

My son was more than willing to participate, especially when my daughter informed him of the plot: Bad guy captures the princess, good guy shows up to rescue her, bad guy gets it in the end. It’s all gone smoothly until this last scene. The final showdown isn’t going well. The dialogue is crisp, the action top-notch. That’s not the problem.

The problem is me. I’m not dying right.

That’s what they keep saying. “You ain’t dyin’ right, Daddy” from her and “The way you’re doin’ it’s the sucks” from him. He says if this keeps up the camera batteries are gonna die, and they’ll do a better job of it than I am.

“I don’t understand what you want me to do,” I say. “I’m telling you, this is how people die. I watch a lot of TV.”

“It ain’t right,” my son says.

My daughter nods. “I don’t know how they do it on the TV, Daddy, but that ain’t how you die.” She turns to her brother and says, “C’mon, let’s go see if we can figure out something else.”

So I lie there in the grass while my children conduct and impromptu director’s meeting, which most likely revolves around what sort of sandwich they want for lunch and how hard it is to find quality actors these days. Me, I’m just thinking about how to die right. It’s a heavy subject. And like most heavy subjects, pondering it brings all sorts of thoughts to mind.

Because that’s what we’re all doing, right? We’re dying. We don’t like to talk about existence in that term. We say we’re growing, maturing. Living. But an argument could be made that our first peek at this world—that first cry when we emerge from the womb—is the only moment we are truly alive. All the moments that come after are spent in the shadow of death.

And I wonder: Is that why I can’t nail this last scene in my daughter’s first movie? Is that my problem? Have I gotten life all turned around, thinking the things I need to do and say don’t need to be done today because there’s always tomorrow? How much time have I wasted waiting for God to act, and all this while He’s been waiting for me, telling me to embrace my days, to ravish them?

How much time have I wasted trying to figure out how to live right instead of how to die right?

“Hey,” I say. “Let’s do this again.”

My daughter says no, there’s been a change of plan. My son’s going to be the bad guy now. He thinks he can do a better job.

“No,” I say. “One more try.”

He smiles and attacks, I laugh and defend. We brawl and battle and wail. Each squirt of our water guns brings joyful laughter. Finally, I lunge into the nearest bush, clutching my mortal wounds, and then collapse with a flourish into the arms of heaven. I embrace that scene. Ravish it.

My daughter yells, “Cut! Wrap!”

It was a glorious death.

Power to the people

Screen shot 2013-10-17 at 8.02.32 PMI’ve seen him off and on for the past three weeks, a Monday morning here and a Thursday afternoon there. From what I can tell, there is no set schedule. Maybe it only happens when the mood strikes—when the anger grows too hot or the despair sinks too deep. I’m not sure. But I’ll give him this: he’s dedicated, despite it all.

He was standing on the corner the first time I saw him. Technically speaking, it was still the gas company’s property, though the spot he’d chosen was on the outermost edge where two main roads converge. To be more visible, I thought. To make sure he was seen.

Older gentleman, dressed in pressed khakis and a brown button-up. Thin, white hair swept to the side in the front, trying but not managing to cover a bald spot. The breeze whipped it, giving the appearance of snow falling up. The sign he held was as large as himself. Scrawled on both sides was a long list of grievances against the gas company itself.

Racism, discrimination, and greed were the only three I could make out that first day. Since then, I’ve managed to catch sight of price gouging and lying as well. The rest are jumbled together and slanted along the big piece of cardboard, as though the charges came so quick and numerous that he feared space and memory would run out.

I passed him by that first day and have done the same all the days after. When the light is red and the radio station is fixed, I’ll look over. Check on him. He’ll see me and raise his sign a little higher, and then the light will turn green and I’ll move along. That seems to be what everyone else does, as well. They just pass him by. We’re all busy, you see. We’re all just trying to get through our days. One old man with a sign that may or may not offer a window into his fragile state isn’t enough to give us pause, at least not enough pause to stop and ask what exactly he’s trying to accomplish. Even the folks at the gas company don’t seem to care. They haven’t even given the man enough thought to ask him to leave.

He was back yesterday, but not at the edge of the road. A few weeks of protesting without raising either sympathy or scorn has convinced him to change his tactics. He was now standing on the sidewalk, directly at the front door.

From what I could tell, it hadn’t made a difference.

To be honest, it’s funny in a way. Also sad. I don’t know what has driven him there and I don’t know if I would agree with his reasons, but a part of me is proud of him. Right or wrong, he’s stood up. He’s making his voice known. Of all the freedoms we enjoy, I can’t think of many more important—more necessary—than that.

Maybe that’s why I feel so much pity for him as pride. Because no matter what it is, it takes courage to stand up and speak. I know this. And all that courage can melt in a moment when you utter those first words and find only silence and apathy in return.

He was there again today, fighting the power. Standing up to The Man. Still with that determined look on his face. The light turned yellow and then red. I fixed the radio station and looked. He met my eyes and raised his sign a little, wiggling it. I gave him a thumbs up. He returned the same. Just two guys giving one another the same encouragement:

Carry on.

Choosing love over anger

Screen shot 2013-08-26 at 9.12.17 AMAntoinette Tuff went to her job at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy last week thinking it was going to be just another day. That lasted until Michael Hill walked into the school carrying an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition. Armed and telling her to call police and reporters so everyone could bear witness to the coming slaughter, he said he didn’t have any reason to live. Said no one loved him. One man with a weapon, nothing to lose, and a wish to die, standing in a school containing hundreds of children.

Yet another example of just how awful we’ve become. That’s what I thought at first. Close behind that was a firm desire to see Michael Hill strung up and every parents of every child in that school given a baseball bat and one free shot. It would have been Newtown all over again. Or Virginia Tech. Or Columbine. Or any number of that long string of school shootings that stretch back too far and contain too much senseless death.

But it didn’t happen that way. Antoinette Tuff was there.

She was the one who stopped Michael Hill, who distracted him long enough for the students to be evacuated. And who, as Hill exchanged gunfire with police, began to pray. For herself, of course. But also for the man who was going to kill her.

“I give it all to God,” she said after. “I’m not the hero. I was terrified.”

She convinced Hill to stand down and save his own life not by threatening him, but talking to him. Antoinette told the story of her own life to calm Hill down, sharing how her separation from her husband had left her feeling lonely and broken.

She told him not to surrender to despair.

Then she told him she loved him.

That’s right. Antoinette Tuff told this monster, this would-be mass murderer, that she loved him. And she said God loved him, too.

Michael Hill surrendered to police not long after. No one died that day.

I thought about Antoinette Hill all week. Thought about what almost happened and what had happened too many times before. I thought about what she said to Michael Hill when news broke of the Australian student shot by three young men who were simply bored and decided to kill someone. (Or because it was a gang initiation; reports vary, but does it really matter?)

I don’t know about you, but anger is my first reaction when I hear stories like that. Maybe it’s the redneck in me, or the father. Maybe it’s the decency coming through in the wrong way. I don’t know. All I know is it’s anger. Every time. It’s rage not only against the people who perpetrate such horrible acts, it’s a rage against the society that creates them and the God who lets this sort of thing happen. We’ve lost our way as a country. There’s a rot deep in our collective heart, and it’s spreading.

But I needed Antoinette Tuff to remind me that anger isn’t the way to fight that rot. Faith is. Love is. What will fix this country isn’t a fist, it’s an open hand.

“Our weapons are not carnal, they are spiritual.” So said Paul to the Corinthians.

Which means our fight isn’t against people. It’s against the heart.

Failing everything

image courtesy of google images.
image courtesy of google images.

Part of my job entails keeping up with the comings and goings of about one thousand college students. All have arrived at the doorstep of adult responsibility. Walking through, they find, is not an option. How they walk through, however, is entirely up to them. Some glide. Others stumble.

Students are constantly arriving, eager to fill their hungry minds and lavish themselves in the newfound freedom that college life offers. Unfortunately, some find that those freedoms can lead to the sort of trouble that leads them back home.

The status of these students is cataloged and recorded and then shared with various departments by way of email. Very businesslike, these emails. Concise and emotionless. But they are to me snapshots of lives in transition.

One such message came across the computer yesterday. The usual fare—student’s name and identification number, and her status. But then there was this:

She will not be returning and is withdrawing.
She failed everything.

As I said, businesslike. Concise and emotionless.
I’ve always had a problem with brevity. I have a habit of explaining a small notion with a lot of words. Which I guess is why that particular email struck me.

Here was three months of a person’s life, ninety days of someone’s experiences and feelings and thoughts, summed up in three words:

She failed everything.

Though I didn’t know this person, I could sympathize. I’d been there. Many times. I knew what it was like to begin something with the best of intentions and an abundance of hope, only to see everything fall apart. I knew what it felt like to realize no matter how hard you try, you sometimes just can’t. Can’t win. Can’t succeed. Can’t make it.

I knew what it felt like to fail. Everything.

When my kids were born, I wanted to be the perfect father. Always attentive. Never frustrated. Nurturing. Understanding. And I was. At first, anyway. But things like colic and sleeplessness and messy diapers can wear on a father. They can make a father a little inattentive sometimes, sometimes not so nurturing, and very frustrated. So I failed at being the perfect father.

Same goes for being the perfect husband, by the way. I failed even more at that.

And I had the perfect dream, too. What better life is there than that of a writer? But no, that one hasn’t gone as expected. Failure again.

At various times, struggling through each of those things, I’ve done exactly what that young girl in the email did. I withdrew. Not from college. From life. I gave up. Surrendered. Why bother, I thought.

But I learned something. I learned there’s sometimes a big difference between what we try to do and what we actually accomplish. And that many times we don’t succeed because there’s an equally big difference between what we want and what God wants.

I learned, too, that failure is never the end. It can be, of course. We can withdraw and not return, as that student will do. Or we can learn that it is only when we fail that we truly draw near to God. Those are the times when we can better understand that our prayers must sometimes be returned to us for revision. Not make me this or give me that, but Thy will be done.

I’ve failed everything. Many times.

And I’ve also been remade.

I may not have made myself the perfect father, but God has made me a good dad.

I may not have become the perfect husband, but God has shown me how to be a soul mate.

I may not write for me, but I do write for people.

Failure has not been my enemy. Failure has been my salvation.

Our lives have broken places not so we can surrender to life, but so we can surrender to God. Our failures can hollow us, yes. But only so He may fill that emptiness with joy.

O’er the land of the free

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I’ve heard there are grumblings that “The Star Spangled Banner” should be removed as our national anthem. It’s too antiquated, those grumblings say. And the words are not only hard to understand, but hard to sing. What kind of national anthem do you have if it’s hard to sing?

And to tell you the truth, some of those grumblings are right. I’ve heard the anthem positively butchered by well-meaning folks who were simply mystified by the phrase “O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.” I couldn’t sing that, either.

That isn’t to say, though, that I’m all for replacing the words of Mr. Francis Scott Key with “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” or “America the Beautiful.” I’m not. I like things the way they are just fine. Not because I love our anthem. Not because I love the words.

But because it’s endured.

We are a people who look ever forward. Hope and change are our new touchstones, and neither of those are readily found by glancing over our shoulders. No, the promised land of better times lies ahead. Just there, over the horizon.
We say that the past doesn’t matter, just the future. Not where we’ve been, but where we’re going. And while that may be correct in some aspects, it isn’t in others. In many ways the future is dependant upon the past, and you don’t know where you’re going unless you take a look behind to see where you’ve been.

That’s true in both the life of a person and the life of a country. We are not the product of our tomorrows, but our yesterdays. The freedoms we enjoy may be sustained by the continued sacrifice and vigilance of today, but they were granted by the courage of those who have gone before us. Men who held firm to the believe that freedom was worth persecution and that death should be favored over oppression.

Men who put country and people ahead of party and self. Who believed leaders were not above the public but subject to them.

Who believed that the ultimate authority was not themselves, but God.

That we continue to cling to what some see as a worn and outdated song for our national anthem is to be reminded that there was a time in our country when such men existed. Perhaps that’s why there is this slight but steady push to modernize the singing of praise for our country. It will help us cope with the knowledge that such men seem to be more difficult to find now.

Whereas our leaders of yesterday are revered, our leaders today are ridiculed. Our trust with those first great Virginians, Washington and Jefferson and Madison, have been replaced by a mistrust for those who lead us today. This, I suppose, is inevitable. The natural consequence of favoring a winning smile and a photogenic face over substance and wisdom.

Those ideas of freedom and liberty that inflamed the hearts and minds of our forefathers seem to have burned to embers now. What caused them to stand and fight now allows us to sit and rest.

So this Fourth of July weekend when we’re surrounded by the present and looking forward to the future, perhaps it would do us well to pause and look back, far back, and remember the kind of people it took to found this country. Because that is exactly the kind of people we need in order to continue it.

Let the words be sung, and let that flame of freedom and liberty ignite again. Let us all make sure that when the question is asked, “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” the answer will always be yes.

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