Power Grid Blog
Honoring America's Veterans on National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
December 7, 2011 | Power Grid Blog Team
by Michael Murray, AAPD Director of Programs
Today, American flags across the country will be flown at half-staff to recognize the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. This day of remembrance calls to mind my grandfather, Relmond Sherrod, a veteran of WWII. After the war, my grandfather returned to his hometown in North Carolina, became a sharecropper and married my grandmother. He was a simple, good and profoundly wise man.
Years later, my grandmother recalls a story of a wounded warrior returning from the Vietnam War. Upon his return, he was reduced to depending on his parents, unable to find an employer willing to hire a man with an amputated hand and facial scars. When my grandfather was made aware of the situation, he was outraged. “That ain't right!” he said, “We take care of our boys.” My grandfather went to the young man’s house and offered him a job on his farm. He continued to support the young man’s reintegration into the community.
Joseph Shapiro wrote in his book No Pity, “Medicine once promised to wipe out disability by finding cures. Instead, doctors only spurred a disability population explosion by keeping people alive longer. In World War I, only four hundred men survived with wounds that paralyzed them from the waist down, and 90 percent of them died before they reached home. But in World War II, two thousand paraplegic soldiers survived, and over 85 percent of them were still alive in the late 1960s.” Ed Roberts said in an interview on 60 Minutes, “Once doctors have learned how to save our lives – and they're awfully good at it now – what is there for us?”
That question remains valid today. Of the 35 million Americans with disabilities, confounding numbers still face discrimination and joblessness. On this day of remembrance, join my grandfather and I in insisting veterans and people with disabilities receive the dignity and honor they deserve with the same opportunities every American enjoys.
United in love and passion, we shall overcome.
Lead On!
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