My Personal Heroes
By Ken Laue
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you.
Deuteronomy 5:16
One of my fondest memories is of my dad and a snake.
As a high-schooler and wannabe naturalist/scientist at Balboa High School in the Panama Canal Zone, I had made a point of studying up on Central American snakes and critters. The rain forest abutted right up to the edge of our back lawn, and one day a baby boa constrictor, maybe the size of a Sharpie pen, slithered up out of the jungle onto our back porch.
I had wanted my own pet boa for a long time, and look! Right here, what a godsend, a baby one that I could raise! Taught to hold snakes right behind the head, I reached for that portion of its neck, but it was too quick for me and nailed me on my thumb.
I let out a startled gasp, but realized there was only one drop of blood. Plus, I knew for a fact it was a non-poisonous snake. But my dad, fearing for my life, took a broom and swept the baby snake into an empty coffee can, snapped on the lid, and whisked me off to the hospital. I protested the whole way that it wasn't poisonous, that it was a boa, but Dad was quite panicked and wouldn't listen.
In all fairness to him, looking back, we had also had fer-de-lances on the lawn before, and they were quite poisonous. The year before the family arrived, while Dad was still billeted at the bachelor officer's quarters, one of the guys he knew was bitten by a fer-de-lance crossing the lawn at night and had almost lost his life.
At the hospital, the doctor put my hand in a watery bath of ice cubes (first aid for a poisonous snake bite in those days.) He called a herpetologist from the other side of the Panama Canal Zone, maybe 40 miles away. After some forty-five minutes in the ice bath, my hand and arm were killing me, but there was still no sign of any venom acting on me. The herpetologist arrived, took one look at the snake, and said it was a rare dark color phase of the boa constrictor. He asked my dad if he might keep it.
"Dad, no! It's my pet boa constrictor!"
Dad's look was all it took for me to realize I better shut up. Off went the boa with the snake scientist. The doctor gave me a tetanus shot and released me.
A couple of years earlier, my mom, two of my brothers, and I had left Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to meet my father, who was stationed in Panama. After a very long and turbulent flight over the Caribbean in a huge tri-tailed Constellation, the airplane’s door opened and I saw him standing at the bottom of the stairs.
He wore a fresh-ironed short-sleeved uniform and a great big smile. He was so glad to see us after a year's wait for family housing at Fort Clayton in the Panama Canal Zone.
If memory serves (after all these years) this scene took place in November, 1963, and I was going on thirteen, come January. When I was a child, my father was known to me as Daddy, and later on as Dad. But now he was The Old Man – at least when he was out of earshot.
Unbeknownst to me, I was soon to receive an education (in spite of my rebellious attitude) on the caliber of this capable, caring man who was more than worthy of my respect.
Dad was a Lieutenant Colonel and a US Army liaison officer with the military forces of the Latin American countries that the US was friendly with. I found out what this meant one evening when Dad decided to take his family to a favorite restaurant of his in Panama City.
He inadvertently made a wrong turn onto a narrow one-way street. The oncoming traffic swerved and stopped and the motorists began honking loudly. The policeman in the center of the next intersection hopped off his pedestal and came striding up to Dad's car, angrily piping his whistle.
I was pretty scared. I knew that some Panamanians hated Americans, and there had been anti-US demonstrations just a few years back.
But my dad was so cool. He flapped open his wallet to show the officer a card, which at first I supposed was his license. Instantly, the officer snapped to stiff attention and motioned the motorists traveling in the proper direction to halt and move over, making a hole for us. He saluted my dad again as we made the next street and turned.
I was flabbergasted and relieved. I had no idea The Old Man was so influential. My dad had favor in Panama!
And Dad loved his seafood. It was over dinner that evening at the beautiful seaside restaurant on the Bay of Panama that he revealed to us how the Panamanian government had conferred on him the honorary rank of Colonel in their military, La Guardia Nacional.
That explained the response of the traffic policeman!
During those three years in Panama, Dad also gave us teenage boys a lot of freedom. He trusted us enough to release us to try our wings.
The American families stationed around us lived in fear of the rain forest. "The jungle," they called it. But my dad had no problem letting us explore the forest, swinging our machetes to clear a path to go fishing in the streams. He even approved the tree fort we built about a hundred yards or so behind the house in the forest.
He would drop us off to camp and canoe for weekends at Miraflores Lake, trusting us to the watchful eye of my older brother, Steve. It was right in the middle of “the jungle,” so we always had the lake to ourselves.
One night while camping on the shore, a terrible ruckus arose in the tree just above us. A jaguar? A puma? I was gripped by fear until our flashlights revealed a rambunctious tribe of monkeys that had decided to claim the tree that night.
Fast forward a few years: I was attending the University of Arizona on my mom and dad's dime, living in their home in Northwest Tucson. It was during the Vietnam War in the 1970s, Dad had retired, and I was studying on a student deferment to avoid the draft.
Yes, I had bought into the rebellion against the Establishment that was so popular in the hippy generation. I tried my best to be a hippy – sporting long hair, headband, and bell-bottom jeans – even smoking pot, on occasion. But I never made it to Woodstock in 1969 so, alas! I was just a wannabe (sigh).
Normally, I did the thirteen-mile one-way commute from my folks’ house to the university on my state-of-the-art racing bike. But for some reason, one particular day, I found myself riding in Dad's car as he took me to school.
I don't remember the entire conversation, but at one point, I distinctly recall telling my dad that his generation had mucked up our world, and Gee, thanks a lot!
He never argued back or defended his generation. He simply held his silence.
The threat of the draft was ever real: Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box. The words of the song by the psychedelic band Country Joe and the Fish mocked the draft and the Establishment.
Dad, however, never spoke out against my misguided youthful beliefs. He just allowed me to be my own person.
Sadly, I had no appreciation for what Dad and Mom went through during World War II or for the horrific sacrifice made by an entire generation to save the world and me from murderous regimes.
Like the Snowflakes of today, I had no appreciation for the fact that my freedom to believe as I chose, to be rebellious and outspoken, and to demonstrate peacefully was bought with the lives and sacrifices of quality individuals in our great military.
Dad was deployed in the Pacific with the Army; Mom was a civilian worker for the Army and then a soldier's wife – one of so many women who lived never knowing: Will he ever come home again?
As a middle-aged man, I began to realize what heroes Mom and Dad really were as I began reading books and articles on the Second World War. One of my favorites was Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation.*
Unfortunately, I was just beginning to wake up and appreciate that Greatest Generation of patriots like my dad, when he passed away in October of 1992 – before I had a chance or the change of heart to thank him for his service. I am grateful that my wife, Bonnie, prayed with Dad to receive Christ just a few days before he died.
Today, I contend for the faith in the goodness of America as written down in the Constitution, just like my dad before me. He put his life on the line in the Pacific, like so many US servicemen and women. I have lived a life of freedom and ease in the wake of their sacrifice.
Considering my dad’s life brings to mind Pastor Warner's 2021 theme for our church: Contending for the Faith. Dad, Mom, and all the heroes of the Greatest Generation contended to keep freedom alive in their world, just as we at Door Church Tucson contend to keep the unadulterated faith in Jesus Christ and His Word thriving in our world.
Just as the US changed our enemies, Japan and Germany, into thriving democracies after the war, we are changing God's enemies, in so many cases and in so many countries, into faithful followers of the Master.
My parents’ generation, after World War II, fought to export democracy and freedom to other nations around the world – just as we believers contend to export the Gospel to all nations and to people groups around the earth.
May we, too, continue to contend for the faith and earn the testimony of King David, who was laid to rest “having served the purpose of God in his generation” (Acts 13:36).
*other great titles are: Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O'Reilly, Yaeger, An Autobiography by General Chuck Yaeger, Flags Of Our Fathers by James Bradley, The Hidden Nazi by Dean Reuter, The Lost War by Japanese reporter Matsuo Kato, and From Pearl Harbor to Calvary by Mitsuo Fuchida, who commanded all the pilots in the attack on Pearl Harbor, but became a Christian evangelist after the war.