The Event

Partiers L to R: Toni, Leah, Rob & Scollard

We were up late for Bad Epitaph's CARNIVAL Benefit. I had to drive Heather all the way back to her place in western Lakewood, I was in bed by three and up again by ten to get to the brewery by noon. I was tired. And I was there to help everyone tear down the benefit.

Two and a half hours later I was rushing downtown for what? For the event, the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the end of the Gulf War, of the "liberation of Kuwait." Two weeks earlier John Campbell (I still don't know his rank) also known as "Leah's vet" invited all of us. I knew Leah would be there, she was supposed to get an award or something, or so she had told me though it was supposed to be a secret. I assumed no one else from the show would show up, but who knows?

The Naval Reserve Center, where the event was to be held was on "East Ninth across from the Rock Hall" -- little did I know that was exactly where it was, a completely unnoticeable building down there by the harbor. I had parked way up a Lakeside and though it was unseasonably warm (61 degrees said the billboard on the stadium) it was so windy.

Just across I-90 this guy is on the off-ramp at the light in an I-Roc, he rolls down the window, "Hey!"

"Yeah?" I ask, but miss his question, it's blown away on the wind. I get closer.
"What?"

"Where's the Rock Hall?" he asks.

I swing my arm behind me and point at the extremely odd-looking glass pyramid that stands out against the sky like the world renown building that it is.

"That's the Rock Hall," I shout.

When I walk through the doors of the Naval Center, I am wind-whipped and nervous. A man in cammos waiting at the door doesn't even ask what I am there for, he tells me "downstairs, end of the hall." So that's where I go.

It's a long narrow hall, I have to go through a few doors and it actually gets quieter not louder so I don't know if I have passed it or what. At the end of the hall there are cadets, at least six deep, on either side of the hall.

As I approach the first (perhaps to ask - is this the room?) they all snap to attention and salute. I actually jumped back. The one on the end smirked. I didn't know what to do. At the end of them I see Campbell, waving me forward. He's got a big smile on his face. "Don't be scared," he said.

I walked through, nodding deferentially at the cadets. Freaky.

Leah and her parents are right there, in the front row and they make room for me. I am still freaked. We are the only two of the cast who come.

Campbell apparently organized this chapter of Gulf vets, and they seem to love him a great deal. A lot of awards were handed out, he put together most of them though a few were from others to him, and he was noticeably surprised and choked up. I already knew from Leah's work that he is quite an emotionally connected man.

I finally see him bring up an award that had a copy of "The Gulf" program in it. He talks to these people, this room full of veterans, cadets, parents of soldiers who died in Saudi Arabia, journalists, about our little play. About these teenagers and young adults, who searched their hearts, asked difficult questions, wrote short plays and put on a show about their war. We remembered what they had done.

Then he asked me to join him at the podium. I was very surprised.

I walked up, he thanked me, I cannot remember what he said (he, of course, made a joke about my looking like Dr. Green) and gave me an award, a frame with a black, cloth background -- the program, a U.S. flag patch, a commemorative stamp, a Gulf War medal with the state of Kuwait on it -- and the caduceus, the symbol of medicine, the symbol of healing. I thanked him. I took the plaque. I sat down.

Leah was honored next, she received the plaque and an American flag.

We were the only two people who were not affiliated with the military or politics who were honored that day. And I have conflicted feelings. I am proud, and I feel so strange about where I came to be honored by a veterans group. I protested this war. I set out the produce a play that condemned this war as a cynical exercise. I bristled at plays called "Patriotism" and plays that went out of their way to vilify Saddam Hussein. And yet something honest came through, so honest that even those who might be offended by its candor, by its questioning, by its refusal to accept the line as it has been handed down, saw what was real, and special about this work.

I don' know what to think about it. I didn't know what to say -- others had given speeches and I didn't thank I would have if I had been ready for it. It was all said in the play.