What a week

When I first heard the sentencing in real time on Friday for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, I thought, man, he's getting off easy.

What I thought I heard the judge say was 270 months of imprisonment. I did some quick math in my head, which has never been a strong point for me. I should never do quick math in my head. I mean, I don't belong to Mensa. I thought, "Geez, that's only 10 years. He'll be out by next week."

Within moments, the racing chyron on the bottom of the TV screen cleared everything up. Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years. I heaved a sigh of relief. That's better. Much better.

But is it justice? Is it accountability? Chauvin is 45 years old and will likely serve the minimum of 15 years, which means he'll be 60 when he gets out. For murder. With a knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. With hands in his pockets and arrogance on his face. All while Floyd was in handcuffs, pleading for his life, until his life left him.

In my mind, there's no justice for a murder. How can there be when the victim no longer lives? Anything else is simply revenge, which for some, might be enough. Justice, however, would be Floyd still breathing with Chauvin imprisoned for civil rights violations.

Chauvin, in fact, still faces federal charges, which means there could be additional sentencing.

And accountability? The City of Minneapolis (and thus the employer of its police department) has already paid the Floyd family $27 million in a lawsuit settlement case. This helps, but true accountability also would include some sort of police reform. Otherwise, this kind of feels like Minneapolis is clapping its hands clean, whispering to itself, "Well, that's one less thing to worry about."

•  •  •

Earlier in the week, on Thursday, we woke up to the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, FL. The building is a 12-story structure that was built 40 years ago on reclaimed land.

Right now, 156 people are still missing. Five are confirmed dead, but with each passing hour it's likely the death toll will rise.

The thing that gets to me right now is watching the rescuers walk into the unstable rubble, sifting through the debris brick by brick, trying to locate survivors. I can't believe that kind of courage. That's got to be war-like courage. Courage under fire. They relentlessly work with the knowledge the rest of the building could tumble down on top of them at any moment. I hope Surfside has $27 million to pay these guys.

Anyway, I got to thinking about high-rise buildings built on reclaimed coastal plains. What greedy developer came up with that bright idea? Surfside has made it optional for nearby residents to evacuate their high rises as a safety measure. Optional. Like a vaccine.

My degree is in English and not engineering, but even my non-Mensa brain can speculate that building tall towers on saltwater marshes will probably compromise the supporting iron rebar in concrete. One engineer, in fact, has stated that the tower was sinking two millimeters a year for at least 30 years.

There are environmental concerns, too. Climate change is resulting in measurably higher sea levels. What does this mean for all the towers built on the three-feet above sea level coastline? And not just in Florida, but how about South Carolina and North Carolina as well.

I've never been a fan of high rises on everybody's Ocean Drive right on the beach. Sure, you get great views of the water for top-dollar prices, but at what cost? The high rises block out the sun and give you the sensation of driving through a concrete canyon. 

It's been a helluva week.

Dad

Well, Dad, there's that one indelible memory that I have of you from an incredibly powerful portfolio of memories you left me in your short 58 years.

We were at Cedar Creek Parkway in Allentown. You brought a baseball, a glove and a bat. I was 6 years old. The sun was shining and the grass was sweet beneath our feet. There was a willow tree nearby. Little Lehigh Creek gurgled just off to our right.

With your firstborn. You're just a kid yourself.

 It was idyllic.

You told me to put on the glove. You showed me how to get into an infielder's crouch, with my hands on my knees, including the hand with the glove. Then you walked a few steps away and batted soft grounders to me, telling me to get behind the ball. And to catch it with two hands.

We did that for a while, stabbing at grounders that practically died in the thick grass before they even reached me.

Then it was my turn to bat. You showed me how to take my stance, how to hold the bat, to keep my eye on the ball. Soft pitches, rock solid memories. You showed me how to love baseball.

It was my Field of Dreams moment, although I wouldn't know that for another five decades or so.

"Hey, Dad. You wanna have a catch?"

That's the memory that, to this day, doesn't go away. I don't want it to.

There were other moments. You showed me how to properly shake hands with a firm grip. You made me understand I wasn't being picked on when a joke was pointed at me. You were an English teacher back then and you helped me learn how to write. I turned that into a career as a sports writer, which I think made you proud. You once showed me a scrapbook you kept of the stories I wrote for the paper. I didn't know you did that.

We had the talk. I think I already knew most of this stuff, but I was your first born, and I think you felt it was part of the parenting ritual. Our talk might have lasted two minutes. I don't remember asking questions.

Somewhere along the line, you became a Moravian minister. You officiated at my wedding, and Kim felt she was lucky to have in-laws like you and Mom.

As we got older, we learned to play golf. The trouble was, I was in North Carolina, and you were in Wisconsin. We'd get to play together whenever we saw each other on vacation. We were horrible golfers, but this was never about our skill set. It was about our quality time together.

Time. I didn't know there was so little of it.

There was that phone call from Wisconsin. You told me you had cancer. The doctor said you had a year to live. You endured it for as long as you could. You assisted at Scott's, your youngest son's, wedding, even though the pain of your cancer must have been horrible. I don't know how you did it.

And then you were gone, way too soon.

And now, 34 years later, I can only hope that I've become the person that you hoped I'd be.

Maybe somebody like you.

Hey, Dad. You wanna have a catch?

D-Day

Today marks the 77th anniversary of D-Day, that seminal moment in American military history that amazes and inspires us at the same time. It shares our grateful awe of commitment with the likes of Valley Forge, or Gettysburg, or even the Alamo, among many other pivotal battles in our hallowed memory.

D-Day marked the primary invasion of western Europe (the Allied landings of Sicily and Italy in 1943 notwithstanding) and signaled the beginning of the end of the Nazi Third Reich.

In terms of timeline, I was born only seven years after D-Day. So the only way I can experience that remarkable day – the horror, the heroism, the history – is through books, or grainy newsreel footage, or cinema. 

There were 4,414 Allied deaths that day, about 2,501 of them American. And most of them on Omaha Beach.

So when I watch the footage, or read the history, I wonder if those soldiers had any idea of the history they were making. Did they see their service as one of preserving democracy in the face of fascism? They saw the effects of fascism – the death camps, the genocide, the destruction – firsthand. Would it ever cross their minds that autocracy could happen in the very country where they were fighting to preserve their democracy?

Could they envision the systematic suppression of voting rights in an era of Jim Crow? But even in this war, attitudes were changing. Two months after the D-Day landings, the Allies made their breakout, eventually outrunning their supply lines. Thus was born the Red Ball Express, a truck-dominated convoy system where 75 percent of the drivers were African-Americans who were racing much-needed supplies through Europe to the front lines. 

The Red Tails, another Black outfit, flew P-40s and then P-51s providing escort for the bombing missions over Germany. The 761st antitank battalion, yet another all-Black unit, wrote history in Belgium. One of its soldiers, an athlete named Lt. Jackie Robinson, went on to create baseball history a few years later.

The 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Infantry Regiment was composed of soldiers of Japanese descent, many of whom saw their very families sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. Despite this, the 100th became one of the most decorated units in our history.

What was that about immigration?

So anyway, when I see the footage of American soldiers falling on the sand at Omaha Beach, does it occur to those men that one day the U.S. Capitol could be stormed by white supremacy groups? That an entire political party deals in conspiracies and lies in order to maintain its power? Isn't that what those soldiers were fighting against? Is that the American future for which those soldiers gave their lives?

I once thought D-Day meant the end of Nazi dominance in Europe. But neo-Nazi groups are springing up like mushrooms in the darkness. Social and political division is everywhere.

D-Day has to mean more than that. We have to be better than this. Those men who fell on the beaches were our Greatest Generation. Surely we can be better than this. 

For them.