Believing in Gene

It seems like a lifetime ago, but it was really just under a decade. Local parents of soldiers and marines massing in Kuwait near the border of Iraq listened as President George W. Bush told Congress and the nation why it was important to go to war. Something about weapons of mass destruction.

None were ever found.

But the wars raged for years, two theaters, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. The one in Afghanistan isn’t done yet.

And now we wait for word of how the nation’s leaders will address the use of chemical weapons in Syria. And a new generation of military parents right here in the Bayou Country are wondering why.

Not all of their minds are made up as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing but there is a profound distrust of all things coming out of Washington, D.C., these days, and if anyone has a right to distrust it is these folks, who may well have more on the line than anyone else.

Gene Richard, whom some of you may know as a radio personality at KTIB in Thibodaux is one of them.

Like everyone else he listens to the arguments, but mostly he thinks about two of his grandsons and a son, all of whom are in the services, and all of whom are therefore perhaps more in harm’s way, depending on what decisions are made.

Lance Cpl. Andrew Savoie, 21, is a Marine Corps helicopter crew chief in Afghanistan. Spec 4 Chris King, 22, is a member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and is station at Fort Bragg.

That’s the grandsons.

His son, 26-year-old Seaman Apprentice Stephen Richard, has just been assigned to the carrier George H.W. Bush and so is headed to Norfolk.

There is no telling right now where that ship will be deployed, but Gene thinks it could well end up in places where there is trouble, depending on what decisions get made on the Syrian question.

This matter of punishing Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons on its own people – a horrendous act in anyone’s book – is hard for folks to get their arms around.

It’s not like the Cuban missile crisis, when we were all scared but understood that we were telling Castro and Russia to do something specific. The outcome is difficult to figure.

So Gene Richard doesn’t even pretend to know what’s right or wrong, or dangerous or safe.

“My first instinct is let’s go get them and then you think this is an act of war not an act of aggression and you just don’t know where that is going to end up,” he says.

So Gene keeps listening, watching and learning.

“I am a Vietnam vet and it was a lot easier for me spending a year in Vietnam,” he said. “My mind was more at ease than it is right now. As a parent and a grandparent it is tough. But you have got to keep the faith.”

The faith Gene has in his son and grandsons to watch for themselves and for their leaders in the military, no matter what the orders end up being, to keep them safe.

“They are out there defending this country and the government is going to give them the best they can. I have to believe they will be fine and that no matter what happens they will see this thing through.”

We can at this point all just hope that on that point, Gene is correct.