A Rare Humility

I rarely bring politics into this blog, not because they are not a part of my life for they certainly but mainly because I like to step aside from them and focus on more spiritual matters. However, I would like to make an exception in honor of Memorial Day which is fast fading into yesterday in the wee hours of a new June morning and share a wonderfully written biography of an honest and humble politician I once knew, fully aware that those two adjectives are rarely used to modify that particular noun. I think you will find it as inspiring as I found it edifying. While Mike Mansfield asked not to be remembered, if we don't reject those wishes and honor the humble people of our nation, our nation's greatness will crumble from the cracks that already run through it.

As a former Montana resident during the days when Mike Mansfield was in the Senate, I saw why he was so well respected. He personally stepped in against state politics to save a community day care center that I had established. It is a long story, not necessary to repeat here, and only one of many of the good deeds of the late Senator Mansfield, former Senate Majority Leader. I had no idea that he was a Marine. That he was and how he lived and died, I believe, is a fitting example of a humility that I have often seen in the Marines over the decades with which I have worked with them. Therefore, the tribute that James Grady wrote for him for Memorial Day Weekend is one that both impressed and delighted me, and I feel compelled to point others to this article (not sure where it was first published; I found it floating on the Internet) in memory of a great man. May we all be as humble!

Pvt. Mike Mansfield: Just One Marine in Arlington Cemetery
by James Grady

Of all the chiseled stones standing silent watch over us in these uncivil and dangerous political times, this Memorial Day consider one modest white-marble slab on a green hillside at Arlington National Cemetery:

Michael Joseph Mansfield
PVT
U.S. Marine Corps
Mar 16 1903
Oct 5 2001

Private Mansfield fell not in battle like so many Americans, nor did he endure combat's scars. He lived to know his grandchildren and died at 98 in Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In these MySpace and "American Idol" days, he ordered that his headstone in Arlington disclose no more personal glory than that honor shared by millions of Americans in holding the lowest rank in the United States Marine Corps.

Not that he was America's ambassador to Japan.