I went to a funeral yesterday at the Protestant Cadet Chapel of the Air Force Academy and I was filled with many different emotions.
I didn’t really know the gentleman all that well but we had shared the same experiences over the same four years there in the early 1970s. I might have bumped into him and his wife at our most recent class reunion but there were more than 750 of us and our paths didn’t cross much when we were both cadets. These days I just struggle to recognize the classmates I was close to. Why did I go? Traditional values. Let me explain.
My mood wasn’t helped much by the surroundings. The Academy I attended and the values we pursued then did not embrace me yesterday. When we were cadets, the Vietnam War was going on. Every so often they were chipping away more recent graduate names on the War Memorial by the flag pole. We said a lot of prayers back then. Vietnam had a way of doing that to you. Now, there’s a different war going on.
They’re closing the Cadet Chapel next summer for four years. I guess that seems appropriate. Never before has the Air Force levied a greater attack on the values we pursued then. The chapel needs to be repaired, but the values under attack may be harmed irreparably.
It’s true that the Chapel has always served all faiths and I’m sure other facilities will be made available. The Wiccans, after all, meet on top of an adjacent hill in a rock circle. But Christian cadets have been targeted by graduates behaving badly, liberal media who can’t wait to poke their fingers into the eyes of this sleepy conservative community, and the remnants of a previous “progressive” administration whose changes may be irreparable. During the chapel closure, like the Church in Ephesus, maybe the Christian cadets will just move underground.
There’s a new skyline in the Cadet Area. The recently erected Center for Character and Leadership Development was a successful fund-raiser for the Academy. The current commanding general once declared that, before this building, the Academy never had a dedicated site for character development. The graduates in the audience looked around at each other curiously. Really? What about the Cadet Chapel? When did the chapel cease to be a center for character development?
Think this critique of the Academy too harsh? When I was a young officer, I was once advised by a four-star commanding general to “tell your generals the bad news. They’re big people. They can take it.” So, I’m just following his advice. I’ve never seen the assault on traditional values so brazen, so open at the Air Force Academy by the leadership of the Academy and the Air Force.
I don’t really enjoy funerals but maybe someone I bump into at our next class reunion—someone I can barely recognize as a classmate—will come to my funeral. Why? Because we are classmates, and we honor each other with what we were taught over four decades ago: traditional values.
And if, as their marketing proclaims, the Academy is producing “leaders of character for the nation,” one truly wonders who’s determining what “character” means.