Dear Friends and Family,

I hope that you will spare me a few minutes of your time to

tell you about something that I saw on Monday, October 27.

I had been attending a conference in Annapolis and was

coming home on Sunday. As you may recall, Los Angeles

International Airport was closed on Sunday, October 26,

because of the fires that affected air traffic control.

Accordingly, my flight, and many others, were canceled and I

wound up spending a night in Baltimore.

My story begins the next day. When I went to check in at the

United counter Monday morning I saw a lot of soldiers home

from Iraq. Most were very young and all had on their desert

camouflage uniforms. This was as change from earlier, when

they had to buy civilian clothes in Kuwait to fly home. It

was a visible reminder that we are in a war. It probably was

pretty close to what train terminals were like in World War

II.

Many people were stopping the troops to talk to them, asking

them questions in the Starbucks line or just saying "Welcome

Home." In addition to all the flights that had been canceled

on Sunday, the weather was terrible in Baltimore and the

flights were backed up. So, there were a lot of unhappy

people in the terminal trying to get home, but nobody that I

saw gave the soldiers a bad time.

By the afternoon, one plane to Denver had been delayed

several hours. United personnel kept asking for volunteers

to give up their seats and take another flight. They weren't

getting many takers. Finally, a United spokeswoman got on

the PA and said this, "Folks. As you can see, there are a

lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days

of leave and we're trying to get them where they need to go

without spending any more time in an airport than they have

to. We sold them all tickets, knowing we would oversell the

flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this flight.

We want all the soldiers to know that we respect what you're doing, we are here for you and we love you."

At that, the entire terminal of cranky, tired, travel-weary

people, a cross-section of America, broke into sustained and

heartfelt applause. The soldiers looked surprised and very

modest. Most of them just looked at their boots. Many of us

were wiping away tears.

And, yes, people lined up to take the later flight and all

the soldiers went to Denver on that flight.

That little moment made me proud to be an American, and also

told me why we will win this war.

If you want to send my little story on to your friends and

family, feel free. This is not some urban legend. I was

there, I was part of it, I saw it happen.