Daily Leaps of Faith

Walter was standing by himself as the crowd of several hundred funneled toward the nearest truck. Like the others he had heard the instructions from the organizer about how and where to collect the wreaths. He had made his way to Arlington National Cemetery on this cold December Saturday to participate in Wreaths Across America, a program where donated Christmas wreaths are placed by volunteers on the graves of our nation’s veterans. 24,000 wreaths were delivered to Arlington this year, but the number of volunteers was great enough for the leaders to instruct us to only take one or two.
Walter’s blindness kept him stationary until a passerby, me, offered an arm which he happily accepted. So began a two hour unplanned adventure. Walter’s desire was to place a wreath on the two adjacent graves of recently deceased soldiers whose story had touched him. A Navy SEAL named Brendan Looney and a Marine named Travis Manion, roommates at the U.S. Naval Academy who paid the ultimate price for our country, are now reunited next to each other in Arlington. The story of these two American heroes is told here. Walter said that they were in Section 60, which it turned out, was over a mile from where we were standing, but that was all he knew about the location.
I’ve seen blind people negotiate their way through Metro stations during my stay in Washington, DC and their dexterity and ability to use the cane to chart the course ahead has always impressed me. Walter possessed few of these skills. He was in his sixties, slight of build, a slow walker, and not a great “stick man”. As I led him up a hillside between gravestones, I prayed that he wouldn’t catch a stone with his foot and fall. We made it to the main road and safer footing in search of two names; but first the challenge of finding Section 60.
I’m sure that I underestimated Walter since he had lived in the district for 50 years, most of them by himself, and managed to work, utilize public transportation, keep an apartment, and even travel internationally. But how does a blind man show up at the cemetery with only two names and a section number and expect to find the graves? He did.
Walter actively tried to engage people we passed, or more accurately, who passed us, in conversation. Some were kind and talked to us, some didn’t, but sufficient directions to the section were gained in these exchanges so that we eventually arrived at Section 60 with its 10,000 headstones. Since Walter knew that the deaths were in 2010, we headed for the far end of the section where the more recent graves were. That narrowed the search down to less than a thousand. As we progressed along the road, we obtained a critical clue from a Master Sergeant who just happened to have an Arlington Cemetery grave finder application on his PDA. He typed in the name “Looney” and came up with a grave number. Success! Or so I thought. Gravestone numbers are not perfectly sequential in Arlington and of course there was a break where our numbered grave should have been.
This just was not going to end this way so I told Walter to wait with the wreaths so I could do a quicker search of the general area. He did so and luckily, I found Lt. Looney’s headstone nearby. There was no headstone yet on the adjacent grave but with the similar grave adornments and Marine ribbons, I was sure that it was Lt. Manion’s. Several wreaths as well as other decorations had already been placed on the graves and Walter carefully added two of ours. We spent a few quiet moments paying our respects, and then set off on the return trip.
Making our way back through an older section where few wreaths had been laid, I randomly selected a location for our final wreath, the grave of Joseph Peterson, a Korean War veteran. Perhaps Peterson’s grave had not been visited in awhile. Anyway, it looked like a good place for the wreath.
I walked Walter back to the Visitor Center and left him at the information desk. He knew someone who worked at the cemetery and wanted to say hello. I said goodbye to Walter and accepted his thanks for helping him accomplish his objective. I felt a momentary touch of guilt for leaving him, but the morning taught me that despite his appearance, Walter was an experienced DC dweller who knew his way around the city, and was very capable of getting home. Look at what he’d accomplished that morning with only scraps of information.
Most of us love to plan and control. We hate taking chances. We think about all aspects of a challenge or objective. If a task seems too difficult, or God forbid, we will need help, many times we don’t attempt it. There are blind people who are unbelievably self-reliant. Walter taught me that not every blind person is. Some need a little help to accomplish their daily tasks. He knew that he wasn’t going to find those graves without some help, but that didn’t stop him from venturing out to try. Walter wasn’t shy about talking to people. If I didn’t help him that morning, someone else would have. Taking small leaps of faith every day is how he goes through life.
I came to Arlington that morning to participate in a beautiful event to honor our country’s heroes. I achieved my objective, but was unexpectedly taught another lesson about faith by the blind man standing in the field.