In March 2000, a new Foundation was born on the birthday of one of our Authors, with a dare. How appropriate! Two Men shaved their heads in a show of support for Children with Cancer and St Baldrick's Foundation was born on St Patrick's Day. Since then they have raised $34 milion dollars by getting 46,000 people in 18 countries to shave their heads. That's an average of $739.13 a head.
It comes as little surprise to me, that the most generous and caring members of our society have taken up this cause and taken it to the world's youngest democracy. Our Troops LOVE kids. Kids love our troops. Our Troops prove this everyday without fanfare. My Team had a guy that could attract hundreds of Afghani kids in seconds in the middle of nowhere, places where not even the goats would be seen minutes before.
My own lack of sympathy towards the demanding brats in our own Nation, whining that they don't have the latest video game, stems from the joy with which Afghani kids reacted with a single wooden pencil or piece of hard candy or even a water bottle. It stems from watching the pride of an African kid as he played with what others didn't have: a rusted out bicycle wheel he rolled with a nail through a stick or a shoe box on tin can wheels pulled with a string, or a couple of Latin American kids using garbage bags for a cape and running down a mound of dirt.
But I digress, no kid has done anything to deserve cancer, no matter how spoiled or poor, but cancer is something which knows no morals. It cares not how old, how young or how innocent its victims. It cares not for the financial ability to treat it nor the insurance coverage of its victims. Amazingly those kids afflicted, while often weaker in body for it, are stronger in mind and resolve. Adversity is a fire that tempers those that survive it.
And to help more kids survive and overcome the adversity of cancer, Our Troops, in the midst of a combat zone, where they bring smiles to the faces of Iraqi kids, gathered and shaved their own heads. In the midst of the kind of adversity that builds the strongest of friendships, Our Troops assembled in a hot tent in the midst of soaring heat at Camp Liberty, Iraq, Baghdad and added their own sandy hair to the cause of kids they'll likely never meet.
The question becomes: Are the Most Civic Minded, the Most Generous members of our Society attracted to the Military as a way to give back to the Nation that has given them so much or does our Military foster such generosity and caring through its Institutional Values that preach Moral and Individual Responsibility and Teamwork? Our Troops do so much with so little, demanding nothing but what they were promised and asking for little more than the rest of the Nation to provide a little more. And this carries on into their civilian lives as they join Organizations like the VFW and American Legion and continue to give back to their communities.
I suspect it is a combination. The Best Members of our Society give back by joining the Military and in turn the Military teaches them how to hone their Values into even greater good. But it is a fact that Our Troops and Our Veterans continue to do More, Better and Most Often for Our Nation and the downtrodden around the world, whether at home or abroad. And the gathering of Soldiers in the heat of the desert to shave their heads for the Child Victims of Cancer is but one more piece of evidence in this fact.
War on Terror News©2007-2008, ARM, all rights reserved. No Politics. Just the Groundtruth from a combat veteran, backed up by independent research and historical study.
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