He was born 22 May 1986. Technical difficulties prevent my posting the oldest and first photo of Evan, an ultrasound polaroid taken in October, 1985. The next post [above] is the counterfactual, the most recent photograph we have of him. There he is in Fort Knox, Kentucky, making sure a .50 caliber machine gun isn’t suffering technical difficulties.

I spent the first hour of the morning looking at his baby pictures. Pondering him, thinking of what an outstanding young man he is, I remembered something else delivered in May, 1986: a commencement address given by David McCullough. That fine historian and wise man encouraged the graduates of Middlebury College to travel internationally — to go to places like Florence and Edinburgh — “because I think afterward you will see and understand your own country more clearly.” He then encouraged them to travel across this country, and he named many places, some of them — Monticello, Illinois, Kentucky, Antietam, and the Brooklyn Bridge — places where Evan has had his “boots on the ground”. “Look at people when you travel,” McCullough said. “Talk to people and listen to what they have to say. Learn to listen. So few ever learn to listen,” he told them. “Patriotism, love of country. Imagine a man who professes over and over his unending love for a woman but who knows nothing of where she was born or who her parents were or where she went to school or what her life had been until he came along and furthermore, doesn’t care to learn. What would you think of such a person? Yet we appear to have an unending supply of patriots who know nothing of the history of this country, nor are they interested.” And he concluded, “Try not to waste too much of your time chasing after success. Success is fickle and very perishable and largely beyond your control. Attainment — excellence — is the thing to strive for, believe me. It will belong to you. Choose your work carefully. It will shape you, it is what you will become. Take your work seriously, but not yourselves. Go with confidence. Prize tolerance and horse sense. And some time, somewhere along the way, do something for your country.”

Evan is to that speech a beau ideal. Twenty-three years ago they were delivered, a coincidence of their similitude. My son is a man cut to the measure of good words spoken among the granite of Vermont.

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.