After promoting peace to folks heading to Progressive field for the last game of a three-game series between the Miami Marlins and Cleveland Guardians yesterday evening, a woman in a motorized wheelchair on the plaza in front of the Terminal Tower started a conversation with me after noting my peace flag and army dress uniform. She was waiting for a ride in a Paratransit bus.
She said she had a brother who served in the Korean War and after his service took advantage of the educational benefit under the GI Bill, earning an engineering degree from the University of Chicago and subsequently working for the Ford Motor Co.
A brother closer to her age joined the army because he couldn’t find a job after high school. When he came home after serving in Vietnam he was so disillusioned with the war he threw away his uniform and everything else connected with the army, saying, “We had no business being there.” I said to the woman, “We stuck our nose into Vietnam’s civil war”.
The woman was so taken with my peace initiative that she wanted to share the $200 she won in the nearby JACK Casino. I told the kind lady I don’t accept donations, but she was adamant, insisting I take a $100 bill.
When people are so insistent that I take money–which has happened only twice with people each giving me $20 bills–I don’t want to disappoint them, so I accept the money. I could buy lots of organic carrots and broccoli at the Whole Foods Market in University Heights with that hundred-dollar bill. I could…
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