Days of Remembrance
There are certain days in our lives, specific days, when something memorable has occurred, days we mark on our calendars. Sometimes it is a holiday, or perhaps a day to commemorate something that has occurred in history, good or bad. It is on those days that we pause and reflect on the events of the past. Whether it be our birthday, a major holiday such as Christmas or just a day that something very personal happened in our own lives, we stop and look back, re-playing the memories in our minds.
On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan carried out a surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, causing tragic loss of life into the thousands and dealing a severe blow to the United States Naval fleet. Shortly thereafter, the United States officially entered WWII. In President Franklin Roosevelt’s address to the nation the day after the attack, he referred to that day as “a date which will live in infamy.”
I too, have a memory of this day in my own history. As a young man in my early twenties, I had, through no fault of my own, been laid off from the engineering firm that employed me, leaving me scrambling for income that was desperately needed. After months of searching for a job while I worked part-time loading trucks, I finally landed a temporary job with a local manufacturing company. I remember that cold December day very well.
You see, I had to maintain my truck loading job in the early morning hours from around 4:30 till 8:30, while at the same time starting out on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder at my new job as a drafter. With a head cold and sore throat, I essentially loaded trucks for four hours in the freezing cold, changed clothes and headed to my new office job where I worked in the heat all day. Miserable? You bet! But I needed the work, and telling someone I was sick was not in the cards.
So, what did I do in my first week as a computer aided drafter? I filed paper drawings, endlessly. Part of the training after becoming a drafter, which was still a time when we used vellum, blue-print machines and straight edges, was to become intimately acquainted with the filing system. Rows and rows of drawings existed for all of the various designs our company produced. One of my biggest fears while hunched over filing cabinets was not how much my head ached or how high my fever may have been, but whether or not my runny nose would drip onto the piles of drawings I was filing away.
Needless to say, I passed the test. It was like my initiation into the corporate club. Although I started out at a bottom-of-the barrel hourly wage, I was thrilled to have work. And because I hustled and learned and caught on quickly, I was soon hired on as a full-time employee after my initial ninety-day probationary period. Indeed, I was in! Thus was the beginning of my twenty-eight-year corporate career.
Was my difficult time of working two jobs, just to get by and make ends meet, comparable to the sacrifice of so many on that “day of infamy?” Not in the least.
Indeed, Pearl Harbor Day will always be etched in my memory. It was a time when the sacrifice of life was made for the freedoms we enjoy. Yet I will always remember the challenging times I’ve experienced in my own life that I’ve overcome, and the stronger person I am today as a result.
I’m reminded of a scene from the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo the hobbit, in his discouragement says, “I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
We must make the most of the challenges set before us and the time we’ve been given. We are not promised tomorrow. Time is short.