Military Support Fading...

Sometimes we get so devoted to something that it is difficult to see the wrong or the failures behind it. It is a lot like our childhood schools we grew up in. If you were fortunate enough to attend one school kindergarten through graduation, then you know exactly what school spirit and pride is all about.

I can tell you my school experience wasn't the most pleasant thing I endured. I went to the same public school from my kindergarten days to commencement exercises in the same buildings. I was bullied, called names by kids and teachers, put down, spit on and beat up. Some teachers thought I was stupid, while others could see my intelligence, and others probably just tolerated me. I was not the most popular, nor the cutest. But I wasn't the ugliest, nor least likely to get along with others. I cooperated just enough, and I got through it just enough. I wasn't the smartest, but not the dumbest, either.

Go Rams! Go Rebels! Those chants were shouted many times through school, at ball games, wrestling matches, and other sporting events. These are ways a school builds spirit and pride. It almost transcends the mindless torture from mind games and bullying that kids are routinely subjected to, and creates a loyalty beyond measure and beyond compare. My school is the best. Better than the rest. And we'd do anything to prove that.

Yes, my school was a great one. My class was a great one. We had a lot of smart kids, and even though I graduated with something like a 3.4 GPA, I was in the bottom 50% of my class. In the history of my school, we had two Rhodes scholars, countless successful business people, entrepreneurs, and average folk like me. One thing most of us had in common is our allegiance to our school.

In the last decade and a half since I attended my school, the school has merged with the rival school district and we've lost our high school, and gained a larger middle school attendance at the building where I went to school for thirteen years.

Then, suddenly two years ago, we started to lose our school building in my hometown. First it was a few bricks that started falling, then almost a quarter of the bricks from the front of the school building fell. It was a dismal spring day when I heard that they had to condemn my school. Well, they didn't condemn the establishment, just the building, but just the same.

That same building that brought together the worst in us, also brought together the best in us, as well. That same building that gave us Rhodes scholars, beauticians and dairy farmers was failing our spirit in what was one of the last reminders of our previous pride in our school.

The final blow hit when the deciding vote to keep or destroy our school was in the hands of one of our school's alumni. She voted to demolish its final existance. And demolish one of the final remnants of a small town's hope for survival.

It happens in many diminishing small towns in this country, but this one just hits closer to my own spirit. I should have seen the signs, though. In my mind, it started when the old theater was demolished after a fire, then Duff's Furniture closed and that beautiful 1800s corner brick building was demolished. Just before my senior year in high school, they tore down the old bank building on the corner. It was just shy of turning 100 years old, and it, too, was a building of such character.

Now, there are hardly any of the turn of the century brick buildings remaining on my hometown's main street that were there from my childhood. The history of a thriving 19th century community is gone, almost like a ghost town from the gold rush. What remains are some of the smaller buildings and some newer structures that look like glorified sheds, a far cry from the bold magestic three-story towers that practically saluted your entrance into the community.

As I read this article about military support fading for the president and the war in Iraq, thoughts of my declining school spirit came to mind. It is not too difficult to see that these military men rally behind anything that boosts their spirit and give them an opportunity to prove their pride, just as school kids would do anything to prove their pride in their school. Sometimes when you sees the bricks that used to hold the facade of our establishment start falling, at first you try to prop up that establishment. When the establishment continues to fall, sometimes you just have to face reality, and decide that we must let the bricks fall where they may and let go. Yes, let go. Because you don't want any of the bricks to destroy your spirit as well.