Memorial Day

I heard the rumble of thunder as thousands of motorcycles approached the capital on Saturday and I knew that it was Memorial Day weekend.  Rolling Thunder was rolling into town from all points west.

Early on Sunday morning I went to an overlook and viewed hundreds of motorcyclists rolling into the District from their overnight perches nearby, preparatory to rolling up and down Pennsylvania Avenue all day in honor of the KIAs in our endless wars and in hope of reclaiming our hundreds of MIAs.  It rolls by the Vietnam Wall which embodies the true cost of our nearly incessant conflicts.

There are members of my family who sacrificed for all of us in some of the wars, my father (the Pacific War), uncle Harry (Pacific War), Uncle Bill (Pacific War), Uncle Bob (Mediterranean War), Grandfather (North Atlantic in WWI) and brother (Beirut).  Fortunately they all returned intact, at least physically.

On Memorial Day at noon I went for lunch at my usual spot.  The food was good, the beer was delicious, and the company was nonexistent.

Maybe Father's Day.  ;-)

Memorial Day

I ran a self-timed 3K race in my home town on the morning of Memorial day this year, finishing the 1.86 miles in 16:24 (8:48 pace).  This was a bittersweet day because although it was a holiday, it was my last day of "work" because the next day I was retiring after twenty-six and a half years of service with the federal government.

Since it was a holiday, I partook of my usual lunch at the local pizzeria in the hopes that my three estranged sons would appear after a decade of non-communication.  I knew they wouldn't, and they didn't, so I invited a friend I had recently been running with to join me and we enjoyed a pizza pie during the noon hour.

We passed by Rolling Thunder as I drove her home and we also stopped in at the Air Force Memorial out of respect to members of the armed forces for their service.

Next up, boys, is the Fourth of July, which falls a week from now on next Monday.  Maybe you'll join me for lunch then at the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover.

My Other Race

On May 25th I ran the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run, a self-timed, short (1.76 mile not 1.86 mile length), flat and free race that has participation t-shirts at the end.  It's open to everyone.  No times are listed for anyone, you can just note the time on the race clock at the finish line for your own purposes if you want.  (At noon on Memorial Day, I had lunch at noon at the Stray Cat Cafe because you never know who might show up at one of these holiday lunches in Westover someday.)

I have my own way of running this affair.  At exactly 9 o'clock in the morning, the time the run kicks off, I run a mile by myself in the neighborhood on a little route I have laid out that brings me into the race course as it traverses down a public street from a different direction, slightly past its midway point.

I join the other runners seamlessly from the side, having already run the same amount of distance as them, and finish the race from there with the rest of the participants.  Actually, my "course" makes the fun run a true 3K length instead of it being a tenth of a mile short.  (After the race, I chatted with another past president of the DCRR Club, my friend Bob Platt, who made sure to point out that he had a faster time than me.)

That has the added advantage of avoiding the incredible crush of massed participants hemmed in on the roadway at the start with kids, strollers, leashed dogs, fast runners and walkers all jostling each other to get to open jogging or walking space, plus I don't have to use up time to go downtown to the start line beforehand, I start the race right from my doorstep.  My "time" this year was 14:52 by my watch for a real 3K(7:58), although the race clock said 16:30 when I finished (I misjudged the race's actual start by a minute and a half since they always have remarks by the mayor beforehand).

Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day, a time for remembrances.  I miss my children, I miss my parents.

Dad served at Peleliu in 1944,

and Okinawa in 1945,

before he left us in 1986.  Mom was with us for another 13 years before she passed on.

JJ&D, be well.

Happy Memorial Day to all.

Memorial Day 3K

I ran in my city's Memorial Day 3K fun run yesterday morning, a low-key race I often participate in.  It's flat and fast and free, and you get a T-shirt at the end.

This year my church had a contingent of parishioners run in the race wearing distinctive T-shirts extolling its mission.  It has been struggling to rebuild its membership following the defection of its former chief priest with a majority of the congregation under his charismatic sway to a homophobic, misogynistic sect, taking the entire church property worth tens of millions with them! 

It took six years of litigation by the Episcopalian diocese to evict these squatters, which finally happened last year following years of lonely worship in the loft of a church across the street by a core of local believers in the church's obligation to be inclusive rather than exclusive in its message of love.  The lengthy enforced separation from its historic and rightful property decimated the church's local congregation base but didn't destroy its message of true faith.

We followed the lead in the race yesterday of the newly arrived chief priest who issued a challenge to any church member who was his age or older of buying a beverage of choice at the local pub for anyone who beat him.  He might have re-hydrated there after the race, but he didn't spot a beverage for anyone else.

As soon as I showed up before the race I could see in his attire and his build that he was a runner.  It's hard to spot that otherwise when the only time I normally see him he's in a shapeless flowing robe, showing nothing and hiding all.  (Above:  Reverend John is on the left, next to the only parishioner who beat him in the 3K run.)

Plus he was being largely uncommunicative before the race.  I recognized the attitude from my salad days of racing last decade--friendly but focused on the upcoming task.

The gun sounded and off we went.  The priest took the lead of the church's congregation amongst the first wave of racers and never looked back,  I didn't see him again after the first minute.

I was running a race in isolation because there was no way I could keep up with the priest and except for a younger parishioner who was hanging with him (and beat him), I was faster than the rest of the congregation members who were there in their distinctive T-shirts (I think).  I started off steadily at a swift enough pace for me these days, glad that I had jogged the mile from my house to the starting point thus infusing my blood with oxygen already in my exertions.  (Above:  Pre-race.)

Round the first four corners we went as the race stretched out from its jammed, pell-mell start to a more ordered series of groups of runners running at the same pace.  As we approached the final turn slightly past the halfway point onto the long last straightaway to the finish, my watch read eight minutes.  Although I was tiring and people were steadily starting to pass me, I was hanging in there. 

The city blocks of the long last stretch were interminable but the raucous crowd support was nice.  We passed the Catholic church then the new high rise unit then the library and there was the final signal light just before the end less than a block away.  I glanced at my watch and it showed 14:40, with a little effort I could break fifteen minutes.

I bestirred myself and finally stanched the steady flow of runners passing by me.  I hit the finish line at 14:55, an 8:00 pace, happy with my effort and my race. 

Father John had finished a minute and a half ahead of me.  When I saw him shortly later, he hardly looked bushed at all.

Thanks.

As I listen to the dull rumble of Rolling Thunder on the highways near my house, happy Memorial Day to all.  JJ&D, I'll be running the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K fun run if you want to come and join in.

I want to recognize the service of all who have served to protect us and our way of life.  It's too many to shout them all out individually so I'll just call out a few by name and contemplate the rest.  A Tomb of the Unknown Soldier honor guard and a fellow I occasionally ran with, Adam Dickmyer (killed in Afghanistan in 2011).

My Dad (Peleliu and Okinawa) and Uncles Bill (Philippines), Bob (North Africa and Sicily) and Harry (Fast Carrier raids on Tokyo and the battles of the Philippine Sea).  My Grandfather (North Atlantic in WWI).

Seymour (Battle of the Bulge), Rich (Korea) and practically all the fathers I encountered when I was growing up (WWII).  My forebears who served the Union in the Civil War, my brother (Beirut 1983) and my several friends who served in Vietnam (Bill Hovanic lost a leg there), the Cold War and the Mid-East wars.  Thanks.

Memorial Day Falls Church 3K Fun Run 2012

The 2012 Memorial Day 3K Fun Run is in the books at 19:03.  I was faster than last year's 19:47 but then again I wasn't a mere five days removed from stomach surgery like last year.  But this year I used an alternate route I sometimes use for this free race when I don't feel like walking the twenty minutes to the start line and jamming in among three thousand other participants on a narrow two-lane roadway without shoulders for the first half mile before the course opens up after the first turn.  You have to work your way through the initial crush of runners, walkers, stroller-wielders. dog-handlers and little darting children very carefully if you don't want to trip and plant yourself face-first on the blacktop.

There's no registration for this race, nor official time assigned to anyone (not even the first finisher).  You show up and run, and a clock at the finish line tells you the "official" time, which is always about a minute behind the true gun time, making for a super fast race on this flat course, especially since it's about  500 feet short anyway.  You can get a sweet time in this race if you can get ahead of the constricting pack of slow-movers at the start somehow, 

What I do instead sometimes to avoid the hazardous start is I begin right at 9 o'clock in front of my house and I burn off essentially a version of my neighborhood mile, which gratuitously adds two hills including the W&OD Trail's bicycle bridge over Route 7,  before my alternative route debouches onto the actual race course .86 of a mile from the finish.  I hit the stream of runners at the time and pace I should be at after a mile of running and finish the last long straightaway with them.  This is an unordered fun run anyway, which strives for inclusion to the exclusion of everything else.

This year my passage was most unusual.

Barely two minutes into my run I ran by the ex-mayor's house, a neighbor of mine, and saw her in her driveway.  I hadn't seen her in several months and she is undergoing a continuing and devastating personal and family crisis so I stopped to talk with her for a couple of minutes.  She seemed to be doing okay.

Continuing my run, by the time I hit the highway bridge I was pouring sweat on this hot, humid morning.  I wasn't killing myself with my pace and I was already rejecting internal complaints that I should walk instead of jog.  Up ahead I could see a long steady stream of runners cutting across my front on West Street where it crosses the W&OD Trail.  Several policemen were blocking the intersection with their squad cars, as usual.  Remember, I have done this version of my fun run four or five other times without a problem.

As I jogged off the trail and turned to blend into the stream of runners (no bibs) on West Street a Sheriff''s Department deputy barked out to me, "Excuse me, sir, you  have to detour that way!"  He was pointing up West Street opposite of the way the runners were going.

What?  I'm a runner and can easily blend into or work my way through (if I wanted to continue down the W&OD Trail, on foot, at that particular moment) a stream of runners.  I join up with groups of runners at various times on runs all the time!

I said to this transport officer who otherwise belongs in the courthouse providing bailiff services, "What?"

"You have to go that way, sir." he said, pointing the wrong way up West Street.  "Or else wait right there until the event is over. You can't cross this street." 

"You're kidding, right?" I asked, sweat dripping off my face and my drenched coolmax shirt clinging to my skin.  The event wouldn't be over for another twenty or thirty minutes when the last two-year old stragglers straggled by holding their daddies' hands.

Now he was engaged with me in the street and his buddy, another Sheriff''s Department deputy, was coming over to add weight to the brewing argument.  A lot of weight.  The two or three real cops at the intersection were ignoring this brouhaha,

"No sir, we're not kidding, you have to go that way."  The second officer was adding a lot to the discussion.  "But I'm not going that way," I announced brightly.

"Then you have to find another way around."  The weight of the law.

While they studied my every move, I skirted their blinking patrol units the opposite way that they were pointing, outside of the orb of their protection zone, and started walking down the south sidewalk of Park Street, which was jammed with dozens of onlookers.  A lot of townspeople come out to run or spectate this race, and I couldn't believe two cops were focusing all of their attention on me, a pedestrian.  Shouldn't they be looking to stop...cars?

But I hadn't crossed their precious line of runners, which had the normal amount of breaks and gaps in it you'd expect mid-race at any event.  A block down Park Street I resumed running, filtered into the street, and ran past the finish line a half dozen block later.  The clock said 19:03 when I finished, which wasn't bad given the couple of unexpected stoppages that occurred during my 3K run.

Honor Roll

Happy Memorial Day to my Grandfather Lamberton (WWI) and my Dad (Peleliu & Okinawa), Uncle Harry (Fast Carriier Strike Force, Bronze Star), Uncle Bill (Philippines), Uncle Bob (B-26 pilot in the Mediterranean & North Africa) and all the other World War II veterans I knew growing up, as well as my brother Jack (below in Lebanon in 1982).

Also to my Great-Great-Grandfather Daniel Webster Clark (Andersonville POW camp), my friend John (Vietnam), my friend David (Special Forces Army), my friend Bill Hovanic (helicoptor pilot in Vietnam who lost a leg), my former workmate Larry (Vietnam era Army), my cousin Bob (Vietnam era Army), my nephew Ben's Uncle Willis (on the Vietnam Wall), my ex-wife's Uncle Billy (Normandy Landings), her Dad (Korea era Army), her cousin Brad's son (1st Iraq War), my former neighbor Rich (Korea), my friend's Dad Seymour (Patton's Third Army) and my running acquaintance Adam (KIA Afghanistan).

I honor you all, and anyone I failed to mention. Thank you.

The Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run.

My second race of the year is in the books. My city has a Memorial Day 3K Fun Run which I run every year.

It's flat, and fast for reasons which I'll disclose later. I walked to the race's starting point, about a mile from my house, and settled into the back half of the pack because I wasn't intending to run very fast out of deference to my umbilical hernia repair operation five days earlier.

I couldn't even break into a trot for the first five minutes of the race due to the congestion caused by thousands of participants and dozens of running strollers crowding onto the two-lane roadway which comprised the first half-mile of the course. The hundreds of walkers and many walking stroller pushers who had lined up in the first half of the pack made it impossible to penetrate into the race course for several blocks.

The roadway broadened after the first turn and sideways darting movement from curb to curb finally made running possible. I moved very slowly and settled into a slow plod.

Ten minutes into the race I was running unencumbered and I jogged along, focusing on my body. I could feel a dull pain where the incision on my stomach was but so long as I ran very slowly and didn't get too out of breath, I felt fine except for the tenderness and some general fatigue.

It was hot though, with the temperature in in the eighties and the humidity high. As sweat started to soak my shirt, I could see the finish line a couple of blocks away.

My watch had just rolled past 19 minutes but I resisted the urge to pick up my pace and dash to it. Although I wanted to break twenty, I didn't want to hurt myself.

My watch read 20:36 when I passed the finish clock of this self-timed fun run. The race clock, however, read 19:47.

I decided to record the sub-twenty time in my personal race ledger, as that was the "official" time. I felt good about completing this twenty minute jog, and used the run to show myself that I shall shortly be back to running after last week's surgery.

Now for the reasons why this 3K race is so fast. I have always known that the course is about a tenth of a mile short, but now I also think that the race clock isn't even turned on until about a minute into the race.

A race with a course that is flat, short and which has favorable time mismanagement. How sweet is that?

Decoration Day

Happy Memorial Day to all veterans out there, and thanks for your service. Here's to the memory of my Grandfather Jack (Navy in WWI), Dad (Marines in WW2 on Peleliu and Okinawa), Uncle Bill (Army in WW2 in the Philippines) and Uncle Bob (Army Air Force in WW2 in North Africa). Here's thanks to my brother (Marines in Lebanon in 1981) and my Uncle Harry (shipboard Marine in WW2 at many battles, including the battles of the Philippine Sea and the Fast Carrier Strikes on Tokyo, bronze star recipient). I saw him in Durango this month and he's doing all right. See for yourself.

It's over, for now.

Mission Accomplished. Major running is over. For now.

Nine runners, myself included, ran the Capitol Hill Classic 10K on May 18th in a winnowing down process that started with thirty-one running wannabees showing up early one raw Saturday morning in February atop the parking garage at the West Falls Church Metro Station three months earlier for the start of the DCRRC 10K Group Training Program. Although we all took the elevator down to the ground level to begin our two mile run that day, some of us ran up the structure's six ramps upon our return.

We originally had seven volunteer coaches, but one acquired a stress fracture beforehand, another tore her ACL in a skiing accident and one developed IT Band problems. So we imported a volunteer coach from the Reebok SunTrust National Half-Marathon Training Program I was associated with after that Program ended in March, along with three runners who wanted to keep up their training.

Our running venues included the W&OD, Mount Vernon, Custis and Capital Crescent Trails, the C&O Canal Towpath, the National Mall and the race course itself. The last few weeks it seemed like the coaches would be fighting over who would accompany the few runners who showed up but order always prevailed. Quiet, unassuming Mary Alice, who is about my age, always showed up and she threw down a sub-hour performance on the hilly race course and kicked the rest of the students' a**es, finishing second in her age group.

Our times ranged from 47 to 75 minutes. Three were under an hour and six met the qualifying standards for the SunTrust National Marathon and Half-Marathon next year. This third-year marathon is an interesting race, it has the second best average finishing time (behind Boston) of any major American marathon, undoubtedly because of its qualifying standards.

Additionally, two more Program participants who didn't run the CHC broke two hours at the SunTrust National Half-Marathon. Congratulations to the performers, and thanks to the volunteer coaches Kristin, John, Renee, Linda, Bob, Sasha, Alexandra and David.

Pretty good. As for me, the Memorial Day weekend was the first Saturday I had off since early December when the overlapping Half-Marathon Program started. It was a long six months but the results of the two programs showed that it was well worth the effort. Next up: The fun of running the Lake Tahoe Relay in less than two weeks on a team put together by my former running buddy Bex, an MIA blogger, and then the start of the club's 10-Mile Group Training Program on July 12th. (Above: Relaxing after the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run during my first free weekend in half a year.)

Fifty Miles Per Hour

Charlie Brown would have loved this. A dollar to get into the ballpark. A dollar for a hotdog with a baseball game in front of it.

At one o'clock on Memorial Day I was at the G. Richard Pfitzner Stadium in Prince William County (VA) with a friend, watching the Potomac Nationals, a single A entry in the Carolina League, club the Lynchburg Hillcats 12-4. Driving the 40 miles to the game at $4 a gallon was a lot more expensive than getting in and dining there. It was a beautiful sunny day and a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Most refreshing was the lack of prohibition at the stadium on bringing food or water in.

Like many minor league stadiums, the seating is restricted to a ring of bleachers rimming the home plate area and extending out to just beyond the third and first base areas. The Man was guarding the entry points to the $14 seats behind home plate and the double row of club seats right alongside third base and first base, but the $1 seats (normally $8-$13) were any other seat that was currently unoccupied. We alternated between sitting over by first base with most of the fans, and third base with the fans from Lynchburg. The sight lines were excellent, and we could sit a mere dozen feet off the field down low, or further back by surmounting the bleachers.

The stadium itself has nothing to distinguish it. Set off the road in a copse of trees, there is no view from it of anything except the trees beyond the outfield fences. My friend kept commenting on how young the players looked and how much she just loves "little boys." I think she meant they were cute. Since I'm a guy, their young, studly appearances didn't interest me much, although I marvelled at how often they all practiced their crotch-grabs.

Their baseball skills were mostly unhoned (this is Single A after all) but the game was an exciting offensive display, with several home runs. There was one bizarre play where the batter hit a line drive back at the pitcher, who turned his back in defense. The ball careened off him and flew over to the third baseman who made a leaping grab of the re-directed line drive for an out. The pitcher came out of the game after being hit. It was time anyway because he couldn't get anyone out.

The bullpens, which were merely a row of chairs for the players set along the warning tracks beyond the bases, saw plenty of action. The home team bullpen had a rubber at least, the visiting team bullpen did not. Whenever anyone warmed up, a spare fielder would have to stand behind him looking towards home plate to guard his back from any errant line drives.

Gangs of teenagers roamed the corridors behind the home plate stands looking for private places. The only diversion I saw at the stadium, besides various silly races on the field between innings, was a baseball toss with a radar gun. I know better than to do one of those things, because men are always surprised at how wimpy their throws are. My friend insisted though, and paid the dollar for three balls for me. My first toss was an embarrassing 31 MPH. I wound up on the second pitch and hummed in a strike. 33 MPH. Daunted, I did a windmill windup and, in effect, uncorked a wild pitch straight into the dirt. Bingo, 50 MPH. Relieved to have hit the half-century mark, I went off to buy another dollar hot dog.

Going to see a Minor League baseball game is always economical and a lot of fun. It was a perfect way to end a nice long weekend.

More Shi**y Divorce Stuff

On the morning of Memorial Day, after the Falls Church 3K Fun Run, I paused at the local USMC Memorial Plaque on the town hall grounds to reflect upon all the sacrifices of the former Marines in my family (my father and uncle in WW2, and my brother in Beirut). Then I went home to get ready to attend dollar day at the minor league baseball stadium in Woodbridge. Plus I wanted to see what the boxes on my porch were that I had noticed when I ran by my house during the 3K race. I thought that maybe a pizza deliveryman had left four or five pizza pies there on Sunday night by mistake. Do you believe that during the race I considered whether I'd eat them?

I received a real surprise. Placed on my front porch, on Memorial Day, were four falling-apart, taped-at-the-corners boxes of old board games from the sixties, with partial contents inside. All related to warfare, three being American Heritage games representing the War of 1812 (Broadside), the Civil War (Battle Cry) and WW I (Dogfight). The fourth was based upon the sixties TV series Combat. On top of the stack was the Landmark Book Medal of Honor Winners. The Landmark Books were a series of illustrated history books written for children, mostly boys, in the fifties and sixties on obscure topics like The Winter at Valley Forge and Wild Bill Hickok Tames the West. I devoured them as a boy, and I have a full collection of them now.

There was no note. Just a stack of decrepit boxes placed upon my porch, secretly and anonymously, in a fashion (set near the front edge) that made it clear the delivery person had likely not set foot upon my porch.

The Landmark book was not mine. Three of the games were unfamiliar. They had all been acquired, apparently, by my former family when we were together. We used to go yardsaling and flea marketing a lot when we were on vacation in Maine during the late nineties. One box had a yardsale price sticker on it.

Then a half-decade of nuclear divorce litigation began, and in my opinion, my children became victims of PAS or parental alienation syndrome. This is where the custodial parent actively turns the malleable minor children against the other parent. The children view it as a form of support for the parent they spend most of their time with, and hence are most dependent upon. The domestic law courts are the great enablers of this very real tragedy. Research indicates that PAS has a devastating effect upon children for all of their lives. Some regard it as a form of child abuse. Others deny that it even exists.

My children haven't spoken with me, or anyone on my side of the family, for years even though I provide for full college tuition for them and they have residence a mere two miles away at their Mother's house. What do you think, is PAS real?

The fourth game, Dogfight, had been my family's when I was a boy. On the inside of the box, in my handwriting, was a log of a series of games I had played with my brother forty summers ago. Since he was eight and I was sixteen at the time, the score was 35 games to zero, mine. But I almost lost the last game. I still remember that he had several planes left to my one, so I had to take the 50-50 chance of flying through his AA batteries to destroy his fleet on the ground. Then I quit while I was ahead. Do you think I scarred him? My bad!

Obviously the boxes left on my porch came from my children's Mother's house in Arlington. From whom? Them? One of them? Her?

What did it mean? When half of you out there go through your divorces, you'll see how paranoid it makes you. Because it's an incredibly vicious free-for-all. It has no rules that anyone abides by, and the divorce lawyers rip and tear at the estate until it's an empty husk, whereupon they finally settle the damn thing. Feel free to email me if you would you like to know how I really feel.

The last thing my children or their agent ever left on my porch was a Motion for an Injunction. It was taped to my door, announcing that "they" had filed a "fiduciary" lawsuit against me during my divorce. Talk about piling on! I found it after work on a Friday. I had a grand weekend, and a really fun subsequent three years while it was being litigated and appealed.

The court later threw "their" petition out, finding after a full evidentiary hearing that it was a harassment suit, an unconscionable attempt by their Mother to interfere with my relationship with my minor children. It was appealed, of course. The appellate court found it was an unjustified appeal and socked her full court costs. But the matter was kept alive for years and that, my friends, is how PAS is done.

So I had concerns. My children haven't communicated a Christmas, Thanksgiving, Birthday, Fathers Day or Easter greeting to me in years. They haven't acknowledged a Christmas, birthday or graduation gift from me or anyone on my side of the family in years. They haven't responded to any offers to attend their graduations or take them to lunch or dinner. They have stonily ignored offers to take them to see David Beckham, any sporting event, or their cousin (on my side) who is a professional bull rider (he competed in an event in Virginia). What was the purpose of placing this pile of boxes silently upon my porch? My thoughts on this ranged far afield, from they're moving to they're dissing me by sending me war games on Memorial Day to they're thinking about me. Why no note or voice mail?

I asked two friends, a man and a woman, what they thought. The man said it wasn't nice; since there was no note I couldn't tell who it was from or what it signified. The woman merely said it was odd.

That's what the boxes on my porch were. More shi**y divorce stuff.

Go For Broke

A week ago I asked if anyone knew this little memorial in the city of big monuments. Someone at work came up and correctly told me she knew what and where it was (barely a stone's throw from Union Station) but no one else showed any knowledge of it. Too bad, because it's a serene, beautiful little park, made poignant by the injustice it depicts.

Amidst the hysteria that followed the surprise bombing of our Pacific fleet by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, many or most Japanese Americans on the west coast were rounded up and interned for the rest of the war in concentration camps scattered about the western part of the country. These Americans suffered incredible hardships, and many lost all they had worked so hard for. Yet their sons, brothers, fathers or husbands volunteered in droves to fight for America, and the Nisei unit comprised of these men earned distinction for their uncommon heroism in combat and suffered horrendous casualties fighting against the Nazis in Italy, France and Germany.

The Japanese American Memorial is a tiny little park, bordered by cherry blossom trees symbolizing the delicate and ephemeral nature of life, with the centerpiece being two cranes restrained by barbed wire, struggling to free themselves. The walls surrounding them have the names of the "relocation camps" with the number of internees at each place carved into them.

It is a magnificent memorial and I love going there. Every December 7th and Memorial Day this small park is a mandatory stop on my run that day.

Thanks to you all

Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor our war dead, grew out of the aftermath of the carnage of the Civil War and traditionally was observed on May 30th. Ever since the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90-363) it has been celebrated on the last Monday in May.

U.S. service deaths since the start of the Iraq war stand at 3,452. I saw several graphic reminders of the incalculable human cost of the conflict while running in the last Army Ten-Miler. Several soldiers were completing the race as part of their rehabilitation from gruesome battle injuries, unsteadily progressing down the road between military escorts, forcing their maimed bodies, often missing parts of multiple limbs, onwards towards the finish line.

Here is how the recently departed novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a WWII veteran who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, described getting shot at in his autobiographical anti-war book, Slaughterhouse-Five:

"The third bullet was for [the protagonist Billy Pilgrim], who stopped dead center in the road when the lethal bee buzzed past his ear. Billy stood there politely, giving the marksman another chance. The next shot missed Billy's knees by inches, going end-on-end, from the sound of it. Roland Weary and the scouts were safe in a ditch, and Weary growled at Billy, 'Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker.' It woke Billy up up and got him off the road."

My brother was a machine gunner in a Marine regimental combat team in 1982 when Ronald Reagan sent his unit ashore in Lebanon in an attempt to impress the Sryians, whose proxy the PLO was battling the Israelis there. When a suicide bomber blew up a Marine barracks a year later and killed 242 sleeping Marines, Reagan wisely withdrew the troops from an untenable situation. The Marines at the time were mere peacekeepers. My brother described getting shot at.

My brother was taking a sponge-bath one night, standing in the dark beside a well-used waterhole behind Marine lines. Looking up at the lights of the apartment buildings terracing away from him on the hillside opposite, he heard a shot. This in itself wasn't unusual in Lebanon. A split-second later he felt the pressure of airwaves passing close by his ear as a bullet whizzed past his head, a nearly-spent round at the end of its effective range. He quit bathing and spent the rest of the night hunkering down in his hole out of sight of the hillside beyond.

My father, a WWII marine, had a bathing story as well that he told me when I was a spellbound child asking him about his combat experiences. On Peleliu, he said, he went to the river alone one day intending to bathe. As he rounded the last turn to the river he spotted six Japanese soldiers in full combat gear standing on the bank. They spotted him at the same time. Startled, the two sides stared at each other. All my dad had with him besides his towel was a bar of soap.

At this point, my father paused in his account, obviously lost in a far-away reverie. "What happened?" I asked breathlessly. My father shook his head reproachfully at the memory. "They all got away." There was a twinkle in his eye that even a little boy could see.

I want to remember the following men whom I knew personally:

(The Price by Tom Lea, depicting the landings at Peleliu on September 15, 1944. Published in the June 11, 1945 issue of Life magazine.)

My father, a marine who fought on Peleliu and Okinawa.
Uncle Bill, an officer in the Army who suffered injuries requiring hospitalization while conducting operations against the Japanese in the Philippines.
Uncle Bob, in the Army Air Corps who flew a B-25 bomber in the Mediterranean Theater.
Billy, in the Coast Guard and present at D-Day.

I want to thank the following men whom I know personally:

Uncle Harry, a Marine officer who saw Naval combat from the Philippines to Japan.
Sy, in the Army and aboard a ship on D-Day, present at the Battle of the Bulge, injured on the last day of the war in Europe.

Running update: Yesterday, getting ready for this relay race in two weeks, I ran for the first time since Wednesday's "memorial run" on the Mall. I went ten miles out and back EB on the W&OD Trail in 1:26:26 (8:39). My left leg is sore again but I am capable, obviously, of running my assigned 9.6 mile first-leg of the relay.

Later this morning I am running in the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run. It's a flat, free, self-timed race starting at 9 am from the Community Center with no winners and losers and a free T-shirt at the end, courtesy of former Lt. Governor Don Beyers. Except for the DC Race For The Cure next Saturday, it'll be my last race before the Lake Tahoe Relay on June 9th.

An early Memorial Day run.

Memorial Day came early for me this year. At noon yesterday M and I took a run down the Mall in honor of the sacrifices others have made for us all.

We left the Federal Triangle and ran west down Constitution Avenue. Soon we were running by the Ellipse in front of the White House where there's a memorial to the Second Infantry Division. It honors the service in WWI of the AEF (Allied Expeditionary Force) sent "Over There" to help reeling Britain and France defeat exhausted Germany in that bloodletting. More than 50,000 doughboys didn't return. The Indianhead Division also engaged in combat in WWII from D-Day to VE day and served in Korea.

A little further on we walked by the Vietnam Wall, with its stark reminder of the terrible price of war. Over 58,000 names lie silent and immobile on its polished ebony face, a roll call of slain youths in the order they departed from us.

After running by the head of the reflecting pool, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have A Dream speech a few years before his death in the Civil Rights struggle, and past the Lincoln Memorial, honoring the president who lost his life in overseeing the shockingly costly internecine war that extirpated the stain of slavery from our land, we walked by the Korean War Memorial. It depicts a group of wary soldiers moving forward or backward in that back-and-forth war that established the furthest reaches of our Cold War influence and crystalized our strategy of containment.

Next we walked through the glen containing the District of Colmbia WWI Memorial. Although hidden away and largely unknown, it is a tall, handsome marble memorial with the names of the DC residents who served in that conflict written across its base.

A short while later we walked through the imposing WWII Memorial. We stopped by the Pacific fountain at one end of this polarized memorial and paused at the names written into its base of the two horrific battles my father took part in, Peleliu and Okinawa.

Advancing to the Atlantic granite column, I silently reflected on the service done by a friend's father with whom I had recently spoken. He had modestly told me about his participation in D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge as part of a tank destroyer unit. Both of these great battles were etched in stone on this side of the memorial. "From Long Island to Gay Paree, leaving broken French hearts in my wake everywhere," he laughingly said. Have you spoken meaningfully with a WWII veteran about his or her service recently? Better hurry.

Next we ran by the Washington Monument, the towering obelisk honoring the man who sacrificed for years in holding together the rag-tag Continental Army which eventually defeated the mighty British in the Revolutionary War and which was the midwife assisting our nation's birth.

As we ran, M and I talked about what we knew of the service of our forbears in WWII . I related the little I knew about my father's service in his two terrible battles in the Pacific.

I have an uncle who was a shipboard Marine directing AA fire, and he earned a bronze star for his service during his day of hell on earth. After a fast-carrier fleet strike on Tokyo, the fleet retired to safety out of range of land based Japanese planes during the following night. They left behind a disabled carrier, escorted by my uncle's ship and one other light cruiser as it limped away at a few knots an hour. At daylight, the crews of these three ships grimly commenced upon their terrifying day of sacrifice for us as all day long they fought off Japanese planes roaring in at treetop level to strafe and bomb the three beleagured ships.

I had another uncle who saw service with the Army in the Philippines during combat operations there. I had yet another uncle who flew a B-25 bomber in the Mediterranean Theater during the war. My children's Grandmother had a brother who was in the Coast Guard on June 6, 1944, running troops to shore in an LST on that that harrowing day in Normandy. According to her, death strode easily into his boat on D-Day and seized a machine-gunner, who was shot to death right next to her brother. God bless. No war ends until the last mother dies who had a child killed in that conflict.

M had some interesting stories to share. While his mother is American, his father is German. His American grandfather was too old to be in the service. His German grandfather was older as well but he was drafted late in the war and assigned to garrison duty in Greece. When the war ended, he attempted to make his own way back to Germany. He was captured in Italy by the Italians and held as a POW for several years on an island near Sicily. It apparently wasn't too bad for him because he often went back to Italy on vacation after that.

M's German grandfather had a brother who was a Luftwaffe fighter pilot on the Eastern front until one foggy day he flew his plane into the side of a mountain while flying over the Carpathians. M's father remembers being in bomb shelters as a child while American bombers plastered the rural German town he lived in which had a munitions plant.

Forty-two minutes, 3.8 miles, eleven-minute miles including our respectful walking tours. It was a non-stop, reflective homage to the sacrifice of others, compressed into a scant noon hour. This is what running in DC can give to you.