Remembering our ‘suckers’

I watched the annual Memorial Day ceremony from our nation’s capital Sunday night on PBS, which highlighted the sacrifices men and women have made to secure our freedom and preserve democracy. There were stories of American heroes who suffered injuries — emotional as well as physical — and death so that we could live free. My father was a veteran of World War II. He rose from enlisted man just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor to captain in the Army Air Corps. He was gone from home for four years with duty in North Africa and Italy, where he contracted tuberculosis that nearly killed him. He survived that, but the disease shortened his life considerably. He died way too soon at age 61. At his request, his final resting place at St. Mary’s Cemetery here is marked with a simple bronze military marker —“Gerald P Cullen, Capt US Army.” He told us, “If it was good enough for Eisenhower, it’s good enough for me.” He was proud to have served his country. Uncle Tommy Murray, Mom’s big brother, the All-American boy from Bancroft, also served in World War II. I never got to meet him. He was cut down by an enemy sniper’s bullet in the Philippines, at the age of 20. The American Legion post in Bancroft was named in his honor. So are the boys in every generation of the Murray and Cullen families who carry the name Tom.  These men are heroes to me and the Cullen and Murray families. But they are not heroes to Donald Trump. Neither is the late Senator John McCain. Nor are any men and women who rest in American military cemeteries across this nation and around the world. Donald Trump said so himself, at an appearance right in Ames, Iowa, on July 17, 2015. “He’s not a war hero … because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said of McCain, a Navy pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam and endured five and a half years of torture at the hands of his captors. As president, Trump — who avoided military service during the Vietnam War by getting a phony medical release — referred to veterans as “suckers” and “losers,” according to his chief of staff, former General John Kelly, and others in his administration. When Trump slandered McCain early in his first run for president, I thought he was finished politically. But Trump’s the guy who famously said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose any of his supporters. His supporters also seem to give him a pass on his disrespect for the military. Not me. I can never forgive Trump for what he said about honorable folks like Dad, Uncle Tom and all the men and women who served the cause of freedom faithfully in posts across America and around the world. They’re the heroes we remembered last weekend, while Donald Trump sat accused in a courtroom of trying to steal an election. Correction: Last Friday’s “Fillers” stated incorrectly that the Upper Des Moines Opportunity office in Pocahontas will close permanently. The office will remain open three days a week.