Author: A Little Faith Lift…Finding Joy Beyond Rejection
www.alittlefaithlift.com
AWSA (Advanced Writers & Speakers Assoc.)
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
(Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee referenced the following story in his Veterans’ presentation speech. It was sent to me by a veteran friend.)
In September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a history teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, removed all the desks in her classroom. When the first period kids entered the room, they asked the obvious: “Ms. Cothren, where are our desks?” She replied, “You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.” When they guessed “grades” or “behavior,” she told them that wasn’t it, questions and answers repeated for the following class periods. Kids called their parents to tell them what was happening, and by early afternoon television news crews had started gathering at the school to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.
The final period of the day came, and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the desk-less classroom, Martha Cothren explained what the students had done to “earn the right” to sit in their desks. Walking over to the classroom door, she opened it, and twenty-seven U.S. military members, all in uniform, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.
Martha said, “You didn’t earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. They went halfway around the world, giving up their education and interrupting their careers and families so you could have the freedom you have. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.”
Martha Cothren, the daughter of a WWII POW, was awarded the Veterans of Foreign Wars Teacher of the Year for the State of Arkansas in 2006.
Towards the end of my high school teaching career, one first-period student failed to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. He didn’t create a fuss, burn a flag or demand attention. He simply sat while the rest of the class stood. One day, following the Pledge, a classmate of his asked why I didn’t do anything about it. (Boy, have times changed!) I explained that that young man had the right to sit because of what our flag represented.
On November 11, we celebrate Veteran’s Day. We are blessed to live in a time when a veteran is respected. Several American organizations (including the one our son, Adam, heads) understand the physical and mental toll it takes on our men and women who spend time in war zones overseas. They are invited to Adam’s ranch to meet others who have endured the same so that stories can be shared and healing (hopefully) can begin. Many return to mentor other first-time attendees. At those meetings, Jesus, the ultimate healer, is shared, and it is not unusual for baptisms to follow. He, more than anyone, knows what it is like to lay down his life for his friends, and in Jesus’ case, his enemies too.
Patty A. LaRoche