Still helping with homework.....from 8,000 miles away

The Army likes to celebrate diversity.......at least that's how it appears. Seth and Eli's company celebrates diversity by focusing on a different person, race, culture, gender - whatever - every so often. Different soldiers are asked to make some kind of presentation to help highlight the accomplishments of different people or groups of people. Seth and Eli were asked to do a presentation on Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona whose claim to fame was helping raise the American flag on Iwo Jima. As they've prepared a power point presentation I've had numerous phone calls:
Can you help us find some pictures?
Can you download this song for us and email to us?
How do you insert a song into power point?
Would it be better to use Movie Maker?
8,000 miles from home and I'm still helping them with their homework! Actually it's been kind of interesting learning about Ira Hayes and thinking about what makes someone a hero. Ira's story is truly a tragic one. You can tell it's a tragic story because they made a country music song out of it sung by Johnny Cash.
Born Ira Hamilton Hayes in 1923 on the Pima Indian Reservation in Arizona, he dropped out of school and joined the marines in 1942. Life on the reservation was tough by any description and Ira saw the marines and the war as a way to better himself and help his family. On February 19, 1945 Ira took part in the landing on Iwo Jima and the assult on Mount Suribachi. On February 23, Ira helped raise the American flag on the top of Mount Suribachi. Two days later the same group of five men raised the flag a second time so photographer John Bradley could capture the event. Of the five men that raised the flag, Ira and two others survived the battle for Iwo Jima. The three men were hailed as hero's and brought back to the United States to help sell war bonds.
Ira was wined and dined, toasted as a hero when in fact he felt nothing like a hero. He was only a guy who helped raise a flag and watched his comrades die. He was just lucky to be alive when so many had died. Ira turned to alcohol to dull the pain. After the war he tried to lead a normal life, but didn't have much luck. People continued to seek him out as the hero who raised the flag. He appeared in the John Wayne movie "Sands of Iwo Jima" playing himself raising the flag. An interesting aside...the movie used the flag that was actually raised on Mount Suribachi. Referring to his alcoholism, he once said: "I was sick. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back. Much less back to the White House, like me." After the war, Hayes accumulated a record of some fifty arrests for drunkenness. On January 24, 1955, Hayes was found dead, face down and lying in his own vomit and blood, near an abandoned hut close to his home on the Gila River Indian Reservation.

The story of Ira Hayes got me thinking about what a hero is. Ira was hailed as a hero for simply raising a flag. If it hadn't been for that photograph nobody would have noticed this Indian from Arizona....he never would have been called a hero. But he was a hero. Not because he raised a flag, but because he served his country. Seth and Eli are my hero's....they chose to do something to help their community. What does it take to be a hero....it's a larger view of the world than simply what's happening to me and what's important to me. I'm proud to say that I'm surrounded by hero's. Friends and family that care about and for others. Don't talk to me about football hero's or celebrities. I really don't care what Brittany what's her-name is up to. I have a different definition of who is important and what is important.

The Ballad Of Ira Hayes

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Gather round me people there's a story I would tell
About a brave young Indian you should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix valley in Arizona land

Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin' water stopped

Now Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

And when the fight was over
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Ira returned a hero
Celebrated through the land
He was wined and speeched and honored; Everybody shook his hand

But he was just a Pima Indian
No water, no crops, no chance
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
And when did the Indians dance

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Then Ira started drinkin' hard;
Jail was often his home
They'd let him raise the flag and lower it
like you'd throw a dog a bone!

He died drunk one mornin'
Alone in the land he fought to save
Two inches of water in a lonely ditch
Was a grave for Ira Hayes

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes
But his land is just as dry
And his ghost is lyin' thirsty
In the ditch where Ira died