How I feel about the Pledge of Allegiance:

The image above is a scanned copy of an old Polaroid picture that has been pinned up over my desk at work since 2001. Even though I have changed jobs and desks several times since then, I look at this picture every day. It was taken in the fall of 2001. I am not sure of the exact day, but it must have been the week of November 20, 2001. I know this because... my younger daughter was three years old and was in her first year of preschool. Her birthday is in May, and they had a tradition that they celebrated "half year birthdays" for the children who had their birthdays late in the year, or in the summer, so they got to celebrate each child's birthday in school at least once during the school year. Another tradition was that whoever had their half-year birthday (or real birthday) that week got the "honor" of holding the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. So this picture is actually a snapshot of the first time my daughter got to hold the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance in her lifetime.

I already mentioned that I display that picture prominently over my desk, and look at it each and every day. I brought it home today on purpose so I could scan it and retain a permanent copy. Tomorrow I will take the original back to work and put it on the cork board near my mousepad. I have several pictures of each of my daughters on my desk, and a picture of my wife and me on our wedding day in 1987. I have pictures of all my girls, but this one is special. I have other pictures of Alexandra when she is older, and in a better pose, but I will not take this picture down, because of course there is a LONGER story that goes with it.

I was working at the US Marine Corps base at Quantico at the time, and there was a very important meeting scheduled on the day that picture was taken. The week before when I was informed of the meeting, I told our government customer that I already had a prior commitment scheduled on that day, and she asked me to move it. I explained that it was the first real "event" at my daughter's preschool, which she had just begun attending. She asked me all the usual questions that I got tired of hearing- why do YOU have to go? Why can't your wife go instead? My wife Susan was working full time as a teacher in Fairfax County at the time so it actually would have been harder for her to arrange to get a substitute for a full day than for me to miss one meeting, no matter how important. Besides, Susan already was the parent who went to MOST of the school meetings for both of our girls- it was rare for me to go, and this was the first time I had asked.

I had already arranged to take personal leave that day, and I stuck to my guns. My manager took a poll of the attendees (mostly Marine NCOs, government civilians, and contractors) and by consensus decided that it made no sense to hold the meeting without me since I was the most important technical person who would be there. The meeting got rescheduled so that I could attend.

But do you know what happened? That woman (the COTR) held a GRUDGE against me for going over her head, and she even tried to have me REMOVED from the contract! My manager refused, even though he knew he was burning his own bridges with this woman, and he had more at stake than I did in keeping on her good side! It has been a rare thing in my career to have a manager who was a good technical person and well as a people person, and who would go to bat for his employees even if it meant taking some heat from the customer(!). I would like to think that Greg went to bat for me because he liked me personally, and there may have been an element of mutual respect, but I think the real reason is because the company we worked for at the time was sponsoring me to get my security clearance, and I was already "in the pipeline" for my clearance to come through at great time and expense to the company, which would make me more valuable to them in the long run. As it turned out my clearance did come through ... on July 4, 2002.

All this happened.... because I wanted to see my daughter say the Pledge of Allegiance.

It wasn't the first time she had recited it... she must have said it every day since that September (not counting the unscheduled week off), and memorized it phonetically without really understanding the words. But this would be the first time **I** would see her recite it while holding our flag. I am sure I would have felt that way even if it had not happened two months after 9-11-01.

That little munchkin, in the red shirt and bell bottom jeans, also shown here is now THIS GIRL (aka "Boo") in our videos from 2007.