Chicken Soup for the Soul of America (14 page)

“Finally, a line I don't mind waiting in.”

Reprinted with permission of
The Journal News.
©2001
The Journal News.

Answering His Country's Call

. . .
G
old is good in its place, but living, brave patriotic men are better than gold.

Abraham Lincoln

The Nebe family and friends are gathered in the kitchen, holding plates laden with Mexican food, their heads bowed in prayer.

They have come on this recent Saturday evening to celebrate Justin Nebe's brief homecoming. Eleanor and Bill Nebe's baby boy, Nicole's kid brother, Beatrice Gomez's feisty grandson, is a U.S. Marine, stopping at home in Texas for a week before reporting to a California base.

Being the first Marine in his family makes him proud. His parents say it makes them proud, too. But since September 11, Justin's recent enlistment has stirred other emotions in his family. They want, of course, for him to serve his country. But now they are fearful, too.

When Justin decided to join the Marines nearly eleven months ago, America stood at peace. He and his parents knew that he might be called on to defend his country. For his parents, the possibility seemed remote. Besides, the military seemed the perfect choice for Justin. The Marines, in particular, appealed to him. He liked the discipline. The honor. The challenge.

Last December, he finished his high-school course work. In February, he attended boot camp. In May, he graduated from boot camp and attended his high-school graduation in his Marine uniform. Since then, he has been training at bases in Florida and North Carolina. And now Justin, who will celebrate his nineteenth birthday while home, is on his way to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, near San Diego, where he will work as a helicopter mechanic.

All of this is ordinary—the experience of thousands of new enlistees each year. Except these are extraordinary times.

Outside the family home, the American and the Marine Corps flags are hoisted up the huge silver flagpole, flapping in the breeze. They once waved alone, the only flags on the block, flying to celebrate Justin's May graduation. But there are flags everywhere now, waving proudly in front of the neighbors' houses, marking the day America abruptly changed.

Justin's homecoming—and his leaving—is particularly bittersweet. Each time, in the last year, when Justin has come home or the family has gone to visit, he, too, has changed. Nicole, his sister, says he walks differently. His mother can no longer see the little boy who once broke all the pencils in confirmation class at church. The teenager who once cared more about his friends than his family has evolved into a young man who says that family is what matters most.

When Justin leaves this time, he and his family do not know when they will see each other again. When Justin arrives on base, he will be given a flak jacket, a canteen and other equipment needed if he is sent to war. Though it's unlikely he will be sent to the front lines soon, the possibility exists. And so does the uncertainty.

“I'm just worrying more and more,” says Mrs. Nebe.

“I have mixed emotions, obviously,” says Mr. Nebe.

“I want to fight for my country,” says Justin, a refrain he repeats often.

At the dining room table, Justin, who weighs 207 pounds and stands over six feet tall, is eating a tamale.

Mrs. Nebe stands behind him, her hand stroking his crew cut. She suddenly smothers him with kisses.

On Sunday, Justin stands before the mirror in his mother's bathroom, trying to button up the collar of his dress uniform. The cloth is straining against the width of his neck. The material is stretched across his shoulders. The weight training has thickened his physique.

Once he has buttoned the jacket, he asks his mother to make his eagle buttons parallel with the deck. Mrs. Nebe carefully turns each button so that the eagle embossed on them has its feet parallel with the ground and its head pointed skyward. She tucks in a stray string. Justin pulls on white gloves. They are ready.

Dressed in his uniform, Justin moves differently. He stands straight and moves crisply. He says he has a different attitude.

“I walk more proud, you know?” he says.

In the parking lot of Trietsch Memorial United Methodist Church, Justin offers an arm to his mother and one to his girlfriend, and they begin to stride toward the church, past the small white crosses that the congregation has pushed into the grass to mark each of the nearly six thousand victims of September 11. Justin stops. He motions to the women to start with their right foot. They stride again, this time in step.

The Reverend Jim Ozier has known Justin for years. The pastor has him stand before the congregation, which Justin does, his shoulders squared, his feet slightly apart.

“It seems just like yesterday when I scolded him for breaking all those pencils in confirmation class,” Reverend Ozier says. “What a little twerp.” There is laughter. “But look at him now.” There is applause.

At the end of the service, the Nebes all stand in the pulpit with Reverend Ozier, their arms locked around each other as the minister gives the final benediction.

The week goes by quickly, and suddenly it is Saturday and Justin must leave.

On the closet door, fatigues hang from a knob. His bedroom is cluttered with half-packed suitcases. He has already said good-bye to his father and his sister, since they had to leave the house early.

His mother tells him over and over again to pack. But Justin is sprawled across the couch with his girlfriend Amanda, whispering in her ear, wiping away her tears. The pair have been dating for more than a year and have even discussed marriage, although both agree they have no immediate plans. On his bed, Amanda has placed a shoebox she has covered with colored paper. “My heart belongs to you,” say the words on the lid.

He can't wait much longer to pack. Soon, his Marine buddy, Jason, will arrive from Plano; they will load up his truck and start the long drive to the base in California. Justin tears himself away and begins to throw clothes into open suitcases in his room.

An assembly line soon forms, and his mother, grandmother, and friend, Taylor, take the bags as they are packed and place them in the foyer.

In minutes, Jason arrives. The young men wedge suitcases into the flatbed of the truck.

“I need to leave,” Justin says. He sounds as if he's trying to convince himself.

Mrs. Nebe keeps going back to his room and coming out with stray items—his white hat, a pillow and a surge protector.

He hugs his mother and his grandmother. Mrs. Gomez walks silently away, her hand brushing away the tears. Justin sees her.

“Come here, Grandma,” he says, and he stoops down and engulfs the petite woman in a hug.

Mrs. Nebe isn't quite ready to let go. Tears are slipping down her cheeks. “Do you have your wallet? All your money? Did you leave your toothbrush?”

Justin doesn't answer. He hugs her again. Then Amanda. Then Taylor. It's time.

Justin finally gets into the truck and Jason backs out of the driveway.

He leans out the passenger window. “Bye. Love you guys,” he says. And the truck roars away.

Karen A. Thomas

A
cts of courage shape human history. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

Robert F. Kennedy

His Dream Came True

The temptation was to stop. Quit running. End the pain that wracks the body of every marathoner. But Erich Maerz heard the voice of his brother Noell urging him to finish the journey that Noell could not.

The New York City Marathon was a 26.2-mile trip through five boroughs and a dozen emotions. It began in sorrow on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as Maerz gazed across the harbor to his brother's burial ground at the World Trade Center ruins, still smoldering in eerie defiance and filling the gaps in the skyline with white smoke.

As Maerz ran through Brooklyn, he communed with his twenty-nine-year-old brother, Noell, a bond trader missing since the September 11 terrorist attacks. As he crossed the Queensboro Bridge, he concentrated on good memories instead of the burning sensation on the soles of his feet.

As Maerz ran in the shadow of Manhattan's skyscrapers, he thought about Noell's baby daughter, born and named Noel on Halloween, seven weeks after her father made a last frantic phone call to his wife. Four hours and forty-four minutes after he started, Maerz crossed the red, white and blue finish line under a canopy of fall color in Central Park. He wiped away a tear, for a short life well lived, for a long race well run.

“He was looking down on me,” said Maerz, who ran under his brother's name and registration number, 8334.

“In my mind, I ran ten, he ran ten and the crowd ran six. Noell will be in the record book as the finisher. That was his goal.”

The 2 million spectators lining the course on a day as crisp as a red maple leaf were so loud that runners said they could hardly hear their labored breaths over chants of “Go USA!” and “New York loves you!” For flag-waving New Yorkers, the thirty-second annual event that began with the release of white doves was a cathartic celebration of New York's resilience, a giant pep rally for the city. For many of the 30,000 runners wearing T-shirts imprinted with the photographs and names of missing businesspeople, parents, police officers and firefighters, the marathon was a memorial in motion, a race of remembrance.

Never has a marathon been such a powerful symbol of man's desire to endure. Never has a finish line been so emblematic of man's will to overcome suffering.

Noell Maerz had been ready to run his first marathon. The former Hofstra quarterback was an accomplished triathlete, kayaker and skier. He was a handsome, energetic young man in the prime of his life, thrilled with his job at Euro Brokers and anticipating the birth of his first child and the first anniversary of his marriage to Jennifer, who he had met on a subway. Why not cap it all with the New York City Marathon?

“Noell loves people; people love him,” said Ralph Maerz, fifty-six, who mixes present and past tenses when speaking of his eldest son. “In the whole twenty-nine years I raised him, I could never stay angry at him for more than ten minutes. He always got out of trouble. That's why we figured he'd get out of the Trade Center, too.”

Just before 9:00
A.M.
on September 11, Noell made three calls from his office on the eighty-fourth floor of the South Tower. He told his father a bomb had gone off but he was fine. He told Jennifer that the plane had not hit his building and not to worry, that he was getting out and he loved her. He called Erich and told him that people were jumping out of windows, but that he was down to the seventy-seventh floor. Minutes later, a second hijacked plane hit its target.

Erich Maerz, twenty-seven, decided to finish what Noell started.

He talked his father into joining him, and Ralph, an ex-smoker who hadn't run since high school, completed Sunday's race in five hours, thirty-one minutes. He said he borrowed Noell's energy.

“At mile twelve, I said, ‘Noell, I'm so glad I can share this with you,'” Ralph Maerz said. “At mile twenty, I said, ‘Noell, I hope you're enjoying this. I hope you can see all these people cheering.'

“And at the finish line I just looked up and said, ‘Thank you, Noell.' I was so proud of him. Now I can say he's proud of me.”

Erich and Ralph are putting their race numbers in a hope chest for little Noel so someday she will understand how her father's spirit endures.

Linda Robertson

The Unity of Strangers

C
andles lit in a circle standing, agreeing, disagreeing but keeping each other's candles lit.

Gary G. Gach

Tonight a friend called. He was going by himself to a nearby park in Los Angeles with a bunch of candles to think and honor the victims of September 11. He wasn't sure if anyone else would show up. Nothing had been scheduled. I had been looking for some place to go to share my feelings with others. I gathered a few candles, a small American flag and met him.

At 7:00
P.M.
, we were the only people in the park, but a small group of people who appeared to be from a church were on the sidewalk handing out candles and lyrics to patriotic songs. We began to sing.

As darkness fell, we set up our candle shrine and more people came. They brought flags and more candles. People began driving by, honking, parking and joining. More people, more flags. Huge ones, tiny ones, one homemade and colored with crayons by a child when his local store ran out. Another friend showed up with her dog that was wearing a red, white and blue kerchief. People started lining the streets and waving their flags. Across the street we saw a long line of marchers carrying votive candles. They had been called about the gathering in the park. The crowd swelled, shouting “U.S.A.!” and waving their flags. There was an older Armenian lady mourning a loss who added her candle to our shrine. They kept coming: Latino families, Asians, young and old, a man in a wheelchair and a homeless man from the park with a flag stuck atop the shopping cart that held all his belongings.