Early on a June morning seven years ago, we drove our son Ezra to the Mankato National Guard Armory.\u00a0 There, he boarded a bus with other recruits.\u00a0 We were able to drive up to the airport and spend time with him before he flew to Atlanta on his way to Fort Benning, Georgia.<\/p>\n
Ezra was 17, between his junior and senior year at St. Mary\u2019s.\u00a0 He was going to spend ten weeks in basic training, the beginning of a six-year commitment to the Army National Guard.\u00a0 He seemed young to be doing such a thing.\u00a0 But then, I suspect every parent of every boy going off to be a soldier has thought the same for as long as there have been soldiers.<\/p>\n
As a small child, Ezra\u2019s toy soldiers mixed with his plastic animals and Pok\u00e9mon creatures in his play world.\u00a0 As a boy, I can picture Ezra and his friend Ethan Siefkes going off to fight imaginary battles in our grove with toy guns and sticks.<\/p>\n
Not every child who plays army ends up in the Army.\u00a0 But Ezra\u2019s interest lasted into his teen years, and eventually to a contact with a National Guard recruiter.\u00a0 (Ethan would go on to join the Marines.\u00a0 After two deployments, Ethan is still serving overseas.\u00a0 It seems there was something in our grove that inspired service.)<\/p>\n
On a winter night, the recruiter sat at our kitchen table with Ezra, Pam, and I.\u00a0 We clearly had moved on from the world of pretend.\u00a0 For Ezra to begin his service before his eighteenth birthday, Pam and I had to sign off.\u00a0 That led to challenging conversation between parents and son, and between father and mother.\u00a0 Ezra really wanted this.\u00a0 That was a lot different than really wanting an X-Box.<\/p>\n
We finally acquiesced, and there we were at the airport a few months later, hugging our youngest as he prepared to spend his longest time ever away from us and home.<\/p>\n
There would be no Junior Bi-County baseball or U17 soccer for Ezra that summer.\u00a0 In their place was a grueling ten weeks of physical and mental challenges that were Basic Training in the heat of southern Georgia.\u00a0 The recruits were allowed only a few phone calls.\u00a0 We wrote letters back and forth: letters, just like soldiers would have sent home from the Civil War. \u00a0It was interesting to communicate with our 21rst-century son in that old form.<\/p>\n
In August, we flew south and after a while touristing made our way to Columbus, Georgia, outside Fort Benning.\u00a0 The day before the graduation ceremony, we drove around the base, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ezra in the various marching groups.\u00a0 We visited The National Infantry Museum on the base.\u00a0 There, one can walk through realistic panoramas of battles from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, complete with light and sound.\u00a0 Each was an intense reminder of what young men have been called to experience for our country.<\/p>\n
The next day, on the parade grounds, we got to see our son for the first time in two months.\u00a0 Dressed handsomely in his uniform white shirt with medals, blue pants, and beret, he was in formation with about 100 other young men who were his Basic Training class.\u00a0 It was a moment when, regardless of your opinions of military or war, you couldn\u2019t help but feel markedly proud.<\/p>\n
I mentioned how young Ezra looked at the airport in June.\u00a0 He and his mates assembled on the field, most of them 17 or 18, still looked young.\u00a0 But something in Ezra looked less like a boy now. \u00a0Parents are used to their children growing gradually; this was a jolt.<\/p>\n
Lots of thoughts coursed through this father\u2019s head as I watched the drills and listened to the speeches.\u00a0 They were trained to defend our country.\u00a0 That sounds noble and high-minded.\u00a0 But those hundred boys\/men by their presence indicated they were willing to give up their lives as part of that.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to know how that notion sets in the mind of a seventeen-year-old.\u00a0 It\u2019s not something Pam and I talked about.\u00a0 But it was there, a pesky fly of a thought you wish you could swat away.<\/p>\n
Later they broke rank.\u00a0 We got to hug our son, bookending the summer with our hug at the airport in June.\u00a0 We met some of the friends he made, bonded by their shared experience.\u00a0 In the relief of that moment, Ezra and his buddies could be goofy kids again.\u00a0 It was good to see he hadn\u2019t fully leapt to adulthood, that he hadn\u2019t completely skipped adolescence.<\/p>\n
Some of that class was Army National Guard like Ezra.\u00a0 They would fly home and go back to school or work.\u00a0 They were committed to Advanced Individual Training the next summer, a weekend every month, a month every summer, and more if asked.\u00a0 Others in Ezra\u2019s class were fulltime Army.\u00a0 After a few days with their families, they would be going off to Army bases to begin their careers.\u00a0 It is likely some of them ended up in the Mideast, very much in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n
In the years right before then, National Guard was being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan regularly.\u00a0 Seven years ago, there was the sense that those deployments were winding down.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t know that for sure, but as parents, that is what we were hoping.\u00a0 Ezra might have felt different.\u00a0 He was young and itching to use his new skills.\u00a0 Ezra finished his commitment and lives in Denver now.<\/p>\n
I look back on being that age.\u00a0 Similar to Ezra\u2019s timing, Vietnam was winding down.\u00a0 Young men a year or two older were very much aware of the draft and their options.\u00a0 That accidental timing had a huge impact on lives, especially lives that were cut short.\u00a0 I have thought about how oblivious I was to all of it then.\u00a0 In the late Seventies, there were a spate of movies about the Vietnam War.\u00a0 I remember watching \u201cPlatoon\u201d and \u201cThe Deer Hunter\u201d at the Pix Theater and thinking, \u201cWow, that could have been me.\u201d<\/p>\n
When our kids were young, I made a point to take them to Memorial Day service at the cemeteries in town.\u00a0 It seemed important to remember those gone and honor those living.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that made an impression on Ezra.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0It was mostly older men holding the flags and laying the wreaths.\u00a0 They were young once, probably not sure what they were getting into.\u00a0 A lot like those young men on the Fort Benning parade ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Early on a June morning seven years ago, we drove our son Ezra to the Mankato National Guard Armory.\u00a0 There, he boarded a bus with other recruits.\u00a0 We were able to drive up to the airport and spend time with him before he flew to Atlanta on his way to Fort Benning, Georgia. Ezra was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 07:37:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124170"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124200,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124170\/revisions\/124200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}