Its the little things…..nothing to do with data centers

So the bully pulpit of the blog is a heady thing.  While I created this blog to talk about all things data center and cloud….I realize what millions of bloggers have realized…..This is an ideal forum to share not only my business views but my personal views as well.  And that is what this blog entry is.

This week I went data center and customer shopping. This weeks trip took me to the Bay area which is the next stop of the Horizon juggernaut. Had some meetings with prospective clients, partners and employees. All in all, a great trip and met some great people.

 Those that know me personally know that I pretty much don’t like to travel. For a decade I didn’t enter an airplane without a parachute and we sure didn’t wait in security lines to board a C-130 en route to a no-named drop zone.  So commercial travel and I don’t mix well. 

So it is with this dread/ loathing of travel that I headed off to DFW airport on my way to SFO. And, because I hate travel, my flight was delayed. Which happens to me EVERY time I fly.  It always amazes me that a squall in Seattle or snow in Sioux City can somehow make my plane late in sunny Dallas. 

So I hunkered down, fired up the laptop, plugged in the iPhone and got to work.  After about 3o minutes, I heard the sound of applause from five gates down.  My first assumption was that a plane had just landed with troops returning from Iraq.  Being a veteran myself, and because I love any man or woman who wears the uniform of our country, I packed up my stuff and decided to wander down to the commotion and thank a vet.

As I got closer, I noticed an ad-hoc crowd gathering with passengers and airline employees alike moving toward the center of commotion. I realized that this was not a “returning troops” scenario. Those are quite organized  and well attended. This crowd had the makings of a mob that is slowly awakened and becoming interested in an “unusual sight”.  As each person drew close enough to see what was causing the excitement, they broke into applause, giving the applause a “ripple effect”.  I began clapping, not even sure why, but knowing something special was happening.

There was a group of the golf carts that are used to transport the elderly and infirmed in the middle of the walkway. And there were signs on the carts, but I couldn’t make them out. So I inched closer.

My first vision of what had drawn everyones attention was at once perplexing, then almost immediately, so very obvious to me. I noticed a small, stoop-shouldered black man with a cane.  Around him, poised like body-guards, were what I assumed to be his children, grandchildren and even great grand children. The man, who was 80 if he was a day, stood there with his body slightly bowed, but with his chin and head held high with pride.  It was  humility, and shy pride displayed in a single body posture.  There was pride in the eyes of the family too. 

The man was well dressed. With a baseball type cap and a jacket. On the hat and the jacket were the things that identified who this man was and what he had accomplished in his life. His cap merely said, ” Tuskegee Airman“.  Enough said.  His jacket bore the “militaria” of the places that he had been and things he had done.  It wasnt just one Tuskegee Airman, it was a couple of them, which is phenomenal considering there are so few of these heros left. 

But the story gets better. Around these heros was a group of similarly aged white ladies.  All looked to be in their 70s and 80s,several needed some help walking and ALL looking as beautiful as they did 60 years ago. These ladies were WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots). These unsung heros of WWII flew fighter planes to the front  for the men to take into battle. Thirty-eight WASP died serving our nation.  These brave women were not considered military and did not receive those benefits until 1977 when the President signed legislation granting them full military status and the medals and recognition that they were due.

There are only a couple hundred of these ladies left. They are every bit the hero as their male counterparts yet received none of the same accolades. 

As an amateur student of US History, a veteran, the son and grandson of veterans, I was in US history heaven. My otherwise crappy travel day was made almost perfect because I got to shake hands with and hug these great American icons. There is no real way to know at what rate we are losing our WW II veterans. Some reports say it is 1,700 a day. The census uses a formula that shows it to be closer to 1,000. A decade ago, there were 5M veterans of WWII left (out of 16M) today that number is believed to be at or below 2M. 

Seek out a WW II veteran, they are fascinating.  They are a true national treasure that wont be here in a decade.  My trip to San Francisco was fine because the whole time I was smiling to myself at the thought of those proud beautiful grandmothers and those brave grandfathers that were trailblazers long before Civil/ Womens Rights movements reached the mainstream.  Thank you sirs, thank you ma’ams, when my children and grandchildren read their history books, I will point at the picture of the WASP or Tuskegee Airmen and tell them,  “I met them. A long time ago I actually shook hands with them.”

In way of a post-script, I have since learned that those wonderful ladies were on thier way to Washington to recieve the Congressional Gold Medal from Congressional leaders.

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