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LYNN--Her voice mail message sounded urgent:
"My
name is Denise," she said. "I'm the mother of not only a Marine
serving in Iraq, but also a second son serving in the Navy. And I
need to tell you something that just happened."
It
turned out Denise Ramsdell, 42, a medical technician from Lynn, had
several things on her mind.
"I
was going to call when I read about that 71-year-old veteran who tangled
with that snotty-nosed college punk," she said. "Oh, I had tears in
my eyes, because that man gave me hope! Watching all these
protesters, I just needed to know there's someone out there who feels
exactly the way I do."
"Protesters and critics are getting harder to find," she was told.
"I
know. Now they all want to be on the winning side, just like in
sports. Only this wasn't sports; this was real. I also have a
12-year-old son who was devastated to think there were people in this
country who did not support what his brother was doing."
But
that wasn't why she called here, although it was related.
Her
story began in the China Lion, a restaurant in downtown Lynn, where she
sat waiting for a takeout order.
"Three men at the bar were having a rather passionate debate about the
war," she recalled. "I was listening to them when a girlfriend
walked in and asked how my boys were doing. The men overheard I had
a son serving in Iraq.
"One
of them turned to me and said, 'Ma'am, the next time you're in touch with
your son, you tell him I said thank you, OK?' And that's when I saw
'Vietnam veteran' printed on his hat."
Ramsdell knew a special moment had just unfolded. "I grew up with
Vietnam in my classroom, literally," she explained. "Some days our
civics teacher at Lynn Classical would turn on the news and that would be
our lesson."
So as
she studied this man at the bar, who was looking back at her, she found
herself replying, "Well, let me thank you, too, for your service to our
country."
He
seemed taken aback by her response.
"He
got up," she remembers, "walked over and said, 'I want to shake your
hand.' I could see his eyes filling up. As he grabbed my hand,
I reached out to hug him and he began sobbing on my shoulder. He
said, "That's the first time in all these years that anyone has ever
thanked me.' Now I was crying, too, so I just said, 'Well, they
should have thanked you; we all should have thanked you.'"
She
never got his name.
"He
was probably in his late 50's, a little guy with glasses, unassuming,
maybe 140 pounds, easy to overlook. But I found out he served in Da
Nang."
"Why
did you call here?" she was asked.
"Because he reminded me we still haven't made amends as far as these guys
are concerned. A lot of them still haven't gotten over the reception
that awaited them when they came home.
"Right now my son is over there fighting, just the way this man fought
when he was my boy's age. These (expletives) who block streets and
yell 'blood for oil' are not only having an effect on people like my
12-year-old son, but they're also having an enormous effect on these
people we never thanked. I think it's reminding them of what it was
like when they came home, and I don't want my sons coming home to that,
too."
"I
guess that's why I called. The day I meet them at the airport, if
they have to worry about someone spitting on their uniforms, I'm going to
be just like that veteran you wrote about. You'll find me rolling
around on the streets, too, and that's a promise."
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