Remembering An Absent Friend

  I did not let Memorial Day 2016 pass without recalling the one shipmate I actually saw dying while I was in the Navy. He was a HAY-SOOSE type Jesus: a Filipino named Jesus Paredes. He never made it past boot camp. An undiagnosed heart weakness led to his death by heart attack when we did an exercise run.                                                          

Jesus was the next oldest man to me in my recruit company, a fellow Christian, and a good buddy. Like me, he had a wife. He was trying to earn United States citizenship, a path open to Filipinos due to the long relationship between the United States and the Philippine Republic. His diligence and helpfulness to others during basic training suggest what a good sailor he would have made. ("He who is faithful in a little is faithful also in much.") I never found out what became of his family.                                          

Twenty years later, for my Navy retirement ceremony, I created a sort of banner in Paredes' honor. It showed a man running up a ramp into Heaven, and bore the Biblical phrase "I have finished the race."