​There are certain things about Kindergarten that I can still remember...The thrill of spelling my first word—C-A-N. The enjoyment of listening as my teacher read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom aloud to the
class.

Learning to read the date each morning (the year was 1997). Snack time — always graham crackers and a carton of milk.

Twenty-six years have passed since then, but much has stayed the same. I still love words and writing; reading remains one of my choicest hobbies; I’m still fascinated by time and its passage; and snacks are still my favorite part of the day.

But much has changed since 1997. Deford Elementary School, where I attended kindergarten through the third grade, once so clean and tidy, is now shamefully derelict and defaced. Thanks to gluten and dairy intolerances, graham crackers and milk are out. And I now have a kindergartener of my own.

There are other changes, though, too; deeper changes that have led me to conclude that the public school experience that I had is no longer available to my children, due in large part to the pushing of social agendas.

For example, when I was in school I remember seeing posters about the importance of being “color blind” and attending assemblies where we were taught that it was character, not color, that counted.

Today, however, the dogma of America as a systemically racist nation is being championed, with religious zeal, in some public schools.

Though many voices deny that Critical Race Theory is being taught in the classroom, some educators and administrators, like Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of Detroit Public Schools Community District, have no problem admitting its propagation.

“Our curriculum is deeply using Critical Race Theory, especially in social studies, but you’ll find it in English, language arts, and the other disciplines,” Vitti said during a November 2021 school board meeting. “We’re very intentional about creating a curriculum, infusing materials and embedding Critical Race Theory within our curriculum.”

Dr. Pamela Pugh concurs. In a speech to the Michigan Senate, Pugh said, “I go further to call on this body and your colleagues to embrace Critical Race Theory as a framework for you to better understand educational inequality and structural racism so as to find solutions that lead to justice for all who live, work, learn and play in Michigan.”

If Pugh were merely a professor sequestered away somewhere in a U of M office building, we might not need to be concerned. But she’s currently the president of the State Board of Education, so concern is warranted.

On top of this are the changes that have taken place, societally, which influence the school environment. Chief among these changes is the denunciation of any individuals or groups that do not meet the increasingly outrageous demands of the LGBTQ+ movement.

I recently spoke to the principal of a public school in the Lansing area, who explained that she had to wrestle with how to respond to a student who demanded she be referred to using masculine pronouns, something to which not even the girl’s parents acquiesced to.

“My assistant principal and I often talk about the day when we will have to quit, simply because we cannot morally do this job anymore,” she said.

I have heard similar sentiments expressed by long-time public school teachers, who lament the downward spiral they have witnessed in the schools where they worked for decades.

I do not claim to have the answer to this dilemma. But I do have a few suggestions.

First, at the very least, communities must fight for as much local control of the public school system as possible. This means cultivating a good relationship between parents and the school board, particularly when it comes to choosing curriculum. School board accountability is key.

Second, home life must be strengthened. For years, teachers have been sounding the alarm that parents often expect teachers to be the sole educators of their children. No matter which option we parents choose to educate our children, we must remember that we, not paid educators, are the ultimate teachers. We will have to push back against much of the messaging our children receive from the culture, whether in public school or elsewhere.

Third, parents may need to look for alternatives to public school. For some, like my wife and me, homeschool is the best option. For others, rigorous online programs, Christian schools, or private academies might be in order.

It is my hope that public schools across the country will reject the push to make them centers of the social agenda and get back to their initial mandate: true education.

In other words, a lot less Critical Race Theory and a lot more Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

If I did not believe in the sovereignty of God (and I do), I might think that I was born in the wrong decade. For as long as I can remember, I have been an old soul. In fact, when I was probably 13 or 14, a family member said that I was the youngest eighty-year-old he had ever met.

He was not wrong. 

My interests have always skewed toward things of the past—antiques, big band music, black and white movies, classic cars, history in general. 

I have also had, since my earliest days, a grand appreciation for those Scripture calls “the silver-haired,” those, in my case, who were members of the Greatest Generation. It has been my privilege to count among my friends veterans of the Second World War, Holocaust survivors, and at least one Rosie the Riveter.

My friendships with these people were special. While I could commiserate with my peers about homework and problems in our social lives, my friendships with members of the Greatest Generation brought something no peer friendship could: perspective. 

These friends, who had come of age during the Great Depression, who had been sent into Hell-on-Earth war zones, who had come home to build families and a nation, these were people with experiences that brought my “big problems” down to their proper scale.

More than once, when faced with what seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, I have heard the counsel of a seasoned friend echoing in my mind. “Throughout your life,” wrote one of them, “you will have many successes and ‘also-rans’. Take them all in stride and thank God for all of them.”

Another, a survivor of the Holocaust, advised me on the matter of happiness. “I survived the Holocaust, and I still smile,” he said. “Why can’t everyone else?”

Talk about a change in perspective.

Of course, the downside to having friends much older than oneself is that the friendships are relatively brief. When I visit the cemetery, I do sometimes feel like the youngest eighty-year-old ever, as I walk from grave to grave, remembering cherished friends, an experience many my age will not have until years down the road.

Even in death, though, the lives these people lived offer a realignment to my own myopic thinking. As a 30-something, my focus is largely on the immediate—buying a house, caring for my family, mowing the lawn, taking the car in for an oil change. All necessary and good things.

But the realization that these friends are now in eternity, their bodies buried beneath the sod, causes me to consider not only where they are, but where I am and where I want to be. 

In five or six decades, when I am the silver-haired—or, more likely, the no-haired—what do I want to be able to look back on? What do I want to be true of who I am and what I have done with my vaporous life?

Moses, that great emancipator and law-giver of the Israelites, must have had this same thought in mind when he wrote Psalm 90:

“The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away…So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:10, 12).
​
I am only a few decades in, and already I’ve had my share of lessons learned the hard way. But I am thankful for the perspective and wisdom that I’ve gleaned from my older friends. Indeed, the Lord has used their lives to teach me to number my days, so that I might gain a heart of wisdom.

​Although I have been told that a visit to Arlington National Cemetery is a moving experience, I find it difficult to believe that the goosebumps on my arms could be any larger there than they are at Elkland Township Cemetery on Memorial Day.

The sight of the Avenue of Flags, each one coupled with a set of plaques honoring a departed veteran, sends a shiver down the spine and a lump into the throat of even the most stoic among us.

I have commemorated Memorial Day in other cities. Some host large parades, while others feature ceremonies with all the pomp and circumstance of Washington, D.C. But for me, Memorial Day will forever be connected to a small cemetery in Michigan’s Thumb, where the whole town gathers beneath the pines to reflect and to remember.

The rhythmic snap of the marching band drum, coming slowly down the drive, quickly disabuses us of thoughts of cookouts and furniture sales, at least for now.

We are here to do something sacred, to inculcate in the hearts of our children and in ourselves a deep sense of the gravity of freedom’s price; to remember that there is a reason for cliches like “freedom is not free,” and that that reason is that such statements are true.

Men — mostly men with gray hair and creased faces — stand at attention. They wear uniforms...some too tight, some too loose, but it doesn’t matter. Their eyes are not on themselves. They face the flag, the same colors they followed into war what seems like a lifetime ago.

And they remember.

Mercifully, there are no politicians on the dais. The only ones there are veterans and a preacher — the guardians of a nation and the shepherd of hearts. And they are there because here we still believe, at least in part, that freedom from tyranny and freedom from sin are interrelated and are the gravest of matters.

In my memory, Jack Esau, a man the late-Bill Kritzman called “a father to Cass City,” is ever present on that platform. For nearly 50 years, it was Jack — standing tall, campaign hat perched jauntily atop his head— who welcomed the community and served as the event’s master of ceremonies.

There are the opening remarks and the short sermon. There are arms around loved ones as a list of names is read.

“Not present, sir!” comes the shout, identifying each veteran who fell from the ranks in the past year. There is the volley of rifle shots that brings surprised cries from youngsters and the playing of Taps that causes adults’ eyes to well up for a different reason.

In that moment, the gravity of the occasion settles on the assembled. Political rancor and the controversies of the day seem petty and insignificant, at least for the moment. Thoughts far more significant occupy our minds as we are confronted by the high price of American freedom.

The ceremony closes and the mood changes markedly. Neighbors, long separated by winter’s gloom, greet each other with handshakes and claps on the back. Families thoughtfully wander the grounds in search of loved ones’ graves. Plans for lunch and outdoor projects are discussed, while children clad in Little League uniforms chase after one another.

And it is perfect. You can see it on the faces of the veterans. Their memories of the past, often dark, give way to the joy of seeing a community at peace, another generation enjoying the fruit of their predecessors’ hard-fought, often bloody, battles.

It is the proper blend of ceremony and celebration, reverence and recreation.

As we gather, again, this year to honor those who paid the ultimate price on our behalf, may we come together to remember the cost of our freedom, then depart, grateful and ready to enjoy it.

In November 2021, New York City government officials voted to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from city hall, because he was a slaveholder.

Similar attempts to expunge the memory of notable statesmen have been made throughout the Union. From monuments of Christopher Columbus and Abraham Lincoln to those of Francis Scott Key and George Washington, none of the greats of our past, it seems, can escape the merciless crosshairs of wokeism.

British historian Andrew Roberts, in a 2022 interview, noted that “there has been, in recent years, a new viciousness toward national heroes. Almost, there’s the sense that there’s no such thing as a hero, that everyone is much more feet of clay than …statue of stone.”

Of course, we should refrain from whitewashing historical personages, celebrating loudly their triumphs while remaining silent about their faults. But surely today’s trend of searching for our heroes’ warts and, in turn, crucifying them for having them is no less heinous.

Call me a Bible-thumper if you must, but I trace the inability of our people to celebrate flawed human beings back to our warped view of human nature.

The scriptures make it plain that we are a conflicted bunch. Though made in the image of God Himself, we also possess a sin nature, capable of enacting genocides, carrying out terrorist attacks, and holding grudges for generations. King David was an adulterous murderer, and yet also a man after God’s own heart.

The people who put up the statues we are now tearing down possessed such a worldview. They never thought that those they were honoring were sinless. Far from it. They understood that the individuals they were memorializing were worthy of honor in spite of their flaws. 

In our own generation, though, we have rejected biblical revelation and, with it, have lost the ability to grapple with both the complexities of human nature and the reality of nuance. 

People like Jefferson or Washington, then, may have worked to create a nation where the experiment of a constitutional republic could thrive; but because their lives were inconsistent with their principles and our modern worldview, they are mercilessly discarded to the ash heap of history.

As far as I know, the process of canceling heroic figures had not yet fully begun when I was a teenager, at least not on a macro scale. And I am glad for that.

My heroes were people of conviction, people whose lives I sought to emulate in one way or another. 
Chief among my boyhood heroes was Winston Churchill. Though early in wokeism’s advance, he was laughably labeled “worse than Hitler” by some enlightened academics, Churchill was the model of tenacity and grit. He was a man with many vices and objectionable qualities, to be sure; but he was also the man—the only man—who had the foresight and bravery required to save Western civilization from Nazi totalitarianism.

Another Brit, William Wilberforce served, for me, as an example of a Christian who put his beliefs into action. Though unpopular, Wilberforce fought against the Atlantic Slave Trade for much of his life, eventually bringing an end to the Trade and the abolition of slavery itself. He was also a tireless champion for the alleviation of cruelty to animals and the betterment of his fellow man, inspiring one biographer to label him a “hero for humanity.” 

Back in the United States, a modern historical hero is Clarence Thomas, an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The descendent of slaves, he was raised by his grandparents in the Jim Crow South, where he experienced injustice and discrimination firsthand. Still, in spite of significant challenges, he worked hard,  graduated from Yale Law School and, in 1991, became the second black Supreme Court justice in America’s history.

Kids need heroes. We all need heroes. I shudder to think of a world where heroes do not exist. To what are we to aspire if we have no examples of fallen people who did great things in flawed ways? How, in a world where every hero of our past is literally being pushed from their pedestal, is there any hope of curbing evil or pursuing justice or making peace with our neighbors?

In one of his many books, C.S. Lewis wrote of children: “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

The influencers of our day, from educators to political leaders, would do well to drop the woke narrative of a heroless world, and instead tell the stories of the men and women who lived their flawed lives to accomplish great things.

​

 A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I made a quick trip to Las Vegas, where we lived for the past several years. Our first stop, admittedly out of the ordinary for a visit to Las Vegas, was the King David Cemetery.

There, lying flush with the ground, was the gravestone we had come 2,000 miles to visit:
MARTON ACKERMAN
JUNE 13, 1929 - FEBRUARY 3, 2022
A LOVING FRIEND

​I met Marton one winter afternoon in 2014, a few months after moving to Las Vegas. A frail, thin man with a Torah scroll pendant hanging from his neck, he had penetrating, pale blue eyes and a smile hued with melancholy.

That he could smile at all was a wonder. The song of his life, from the very start, was played in the minor key.

When just a toddler, his parents separated, not only relationally, but geographically, his mother taking him and his brother from their home in Mexico back to the old country, in Hungary.

Life there was happier, but it was not easy. He grew up in poverty, an Orthodox Jewish boy, living in a cramped Budapest apartment with his mother, grandmother, aunts, little sister, and elder brother, unable even to afford a toothbrush.

The Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944. He was a 14-year-old boy living in a house full of women, trying to make sense of a world gone mad. Gentile children — peers, many of them — imbibed the antisemitism of their parents, teachers, priests, and media, and spewed venomous remarks at him.

Soon, the abuse became physical. On one occasion, a group of non-Jewish kids surrounded him and repeatedly banged his head up against a metal storefront shutter, yelling “Christ-killer!” with each blow.

Eventually, he and his brother were separated from the rest of the family and were put to work inside the Budapest Ghetto.

On one occasion, while clearing debris in the ghetto, a bomb was dropped. Marton and his brother saw it hit the cobblestone pavement, bounce into the air, and detonate. It sent his brother through a storefront window, while he was thrown to the ground. Shrapnel marred his face. One piece of metal remained in his earlobe for the rest of his life.

The Allies liberated Budapest in 1945. He was just a few months shy of his 16th birthday and was faced with the daunting job not only of putting his young life back together, but also of trying to build an adult life from scratch.

That task was a long and winding road. Hungary was then governed by Soviet Russia, and their brutality combined with a severe lack of food, led him and his brother to seek refuge elsewhere. Their first stop was Romania, where they were detained and put in jail for six months for failing to produce identity papers.

Through a series of miraculous events, he and his brother were able to get out of jail and return to Budapest. But rumors started circulating that the Soviets were preparing to take young Hungarians back to Russia to help reconstruct the country. He wanted no part of that. So, off to Germany he went.

There, he was arrested, again, this time by the allies, and was put in a displaced persons camp.

A couple of years, and countless twists and turns later, he ended up back where his life started, in Mexico City. There, he lived for ten years before immigrating to the United States in the late 1950s.

For Marton, life in the States was humble, but satisfying. He married and worked a steady job at the same company for some 30 years before retiring to Las Vegas.

Our friendship began because of a volunteer program with which I served. Each week, I took him to get groceries, to have his hair cut, or to visit his doctor. But as time went on, we bonded in a special way.

The 60-plus years between us meant nothing in the light of shared interests and mutual respect.

As the years passed, Marton became a part of my family. In fact, he was like family before I even had one of my own.

When new members were added — first my wife, then my daughter and son — Marton embraced them wholeheartedly.

In his last year, he moved just across the parking lot from us at our condominium complex. Either my wife or I visited him every day, and my children enjoyed raiding his candy dish and climbing onto his lap to jabber and to play with their “Zayde” — Yiddish for grandpa.

A year has passed now since Marton died. Standing by his grave, the brisk morning wind blowing at our backs, my wife and I each collected a pebble and put it on his stone, an ancient Jewish tradition.

Rabbi Simkha Weintraub explains that “by placing the stone, we show that we have been there, and that the individual’s memory continues to live on in and through us.”

I don’t know if my children will have any memory of Marton. But I know that my wife and I could never forget him.

So, each February, as we feel the throb of loss, we’ll sit with our children and tell them about the sweet man with the sad smile and the pale blue eyes and the Torah scroll around his neck.

And we’ll urge them, too, to never forget.