THE ONE IN A THOUSAND

The Kerry Fairy ^ | 09/29/04 | Becki Snow

[dandelion]

Tonight, there is a picture on the mantle - and no one will ever take it down. If. in some distant time another asks "What was it he did? Why did he die?", someone will take the picture in their hands and hold it, as if to bring him back from the arms of death. Then they will speak him again into life...

"What was it he did? Why did he die?"

If I could see what he saw with his eyes that day, I might know what it was he saw with such beauty. I only know that he saw it with such clarity, such love, that it spilled out of his soul and through his life until it filled a family, a town, a country. It is the look that keeps the heart from forever breaking - the look that lets you know that, to him, it was worth everything to be the man he became, the man he would forever be...

the man who would lay down his life for a cause he loved more than life.

MICK BEKOWSKY

Tri Valley Herald - CONCORD -- For some, it takes a lifetime to find a passion.

For Mick Bekowsky, it only took until he was 10-years-old.

It was obvious even then this boy would follow in the footsteps of his grandfather who served in the Navy for 30 years.

Just four months after graduating from Concord High School in 2001, Mick Bekowsky joined the Marines and never looked back.

On Monday, exactly one month before he was due home from his second tour of duty, Cpl. Mick Bekowsky was one of seven Marines killed in a suicide bombing near Fallujah, Iraq.

"(Mick) was an average, American kid who was trying to grow up and find his way in the world," said Mick's father 39-year-old Brian Bekowsky. "He was doing what he believed in doing. He was in the Marine Corps because he wanted to be in the Marine Corps, and I don't think he had any regrets."...

----------

The soldier sent a last letter, which arrived the same day his family was notified of his death. He sent his love to his family, especially little sister Haley, 12.

"He said he loved us and wanted us to know," his mother said.

News of Bekowsky's death came the same week that U.S. military deaths in Iraq passed 1,000, almost three times the number of Americans lost in the Persian Gulf War.

Bekowsky's relatives and friends don't want his death to be in vain. "We want people to remember that all of our kids are still there and not take for granted the things that they defend for us," his father said. "They are defending what we have and I would like people to remember that."

All the world cannot keep us from dying. We fall, we fail, and the world goes on as it always has; but in our living and our dying, we change the world. This was a man who changed the world for better, and not all the enemies or screaming protestors or simpering politicians can change that. There are those who may question what they did, or why they died; it will not ever change the fact that these, the Angels among us, gave their lives for the cause of Freedom and Justice and Good.

He was the One in a Thousand - the Thousand who, in their dying, have saved us from the enemy that hates us. He was the One in a Thousand who kept my family free from the terror that shadows us still, the One in a Thousand that have given their lives so I might close the door to the darkness and know there will be another morning for America.

There will be others, for this war is not over. There will be men and women who turn their faces to the task with the same look of light as this One in a Thousand, and they will die for us. If we understand what it was they did and why they died, then they will not have died in vain.

I know what they did. I know why they died. They did not die in vain.

Tonight, I turned away from the picture of the One in a Thousand, and I went to my little son. He lay sleeping safe in his bed, the sheets rumpled around him; but even in the half-light I could see his face, so like the man in the picture. I kissed the face of Why they died, knowing that someday the picture on the mantle may be his own...

and tonight, in a thousand homes, someone kisses the picture on the mantle goodnight.