"During a visit with a fellow chaplain, who happened to be
assigned to the Pentagon, I had a chance to hear a first-hand
account of an incident that happened right after Flight 77 hit
the Pentagon. The chaplain told me what happened at a
Daycare Center near where the impact occurred.
This daycare had many children, including infants who were in
heavy cribs. The Daycare Supervisor, looking at all the children
they needed to evacuate, was in a panic over what they could do.
There were many children, mostly toddlers, as well as the infants
that would need to be taken out with the cribs. There was no time
to try to bundle them into carriers and strollers.
Just then a young Marine came
running into the center and asked what they needed. After hearing
what the Center Director was trying to do, he ran back out into
the hallway and disappeared.
The Director thought, 'well, here
we are - on our own.' But in about 2 minutes the Marine returned
with 40 other Marines in tow. Each of them grabbed a crib with a
child, and the rest started gathering up toddlers.
The Director and her staff then helped them take all the children
out of the center and down toward a park on thePotomac near the
Pentagon. Once they got about 3/4 of a mile outside the building,
the Marines stopped in the park, and then did a fabulous thing -
they formed a circle with the cribs, which were quite sturdy and
heavy, like the covered wagons in the Old West.
Inside this circle of cribs, they put the toddlers, to keep them
from wandering off. Outside this circle were the 40 Marines,
forming a perimeter around the children and waiting for
instructions. There they remained until the parents could be
notified and come get their children."
The Chaplain then said, "I don't think any of us saw or heard of
this on any of the news stories of the day. It was just an
incredible story of those Marines responding willingly and quickly
to a tactical problem that presented itself. - But would we have
expected any less of them?"
Remember
Ronald Reagan's great compliment: "Most of us wonder if our
lives can make any difference. Marines don't have that problem."
This just one story
told about America's courageous
soldiers protecting
the children of the United States of America . I am proud and
feel very lucky to be an American.
Keep our soldiers in your prayers for their safe return home.
In memory of all the Americans lost on 9/11/2001.
======================================================================================
"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism
to
Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving
Americans small doses of Socialism until they suddenly awake
to find they live under Communism."
- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
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