Mental fitness is a dynamic process. I fully accepted the Army's challenge that leaders should never become intellectually complacent, but rather should exercise their minds, just as they were required to stay in good condition to meet physical fitness standards.
Commanding the 703rd Military Intelligence Brigade in Kunia, Hawaii, I wanted to improve the officer development program. We had a very high level of physical activity, judging by their deep North Shore suntans. What we needed to enhance was their mental acuity. For a Military Intelligence officer, knowledge of a foreign language would help make them competitive in a rapidly downsizing Army.
From now on everyone would study a foreign language under the Defense Language Institute program until they achieved a minimum level of proficiency.
“Everyone, ma'am?” a major asked.
Obviously, the officers wanted to know if I intended to follow my own edict.
“Everyone.”
Since I already had received considerable training in French and German, I knew there would be no challenge in reaching minimum proficiency in either of those two languages. So I opted for Mandarin Chinese, widely considered to be among the most challenging languages for Westerners to learn. This difficulty lay in the tonal quality of spoken Chinese—level, rising, falling, and high rising—and also in the bewildering nature of its traditional ideographs, which did not reveal these tones through markers. The student had to infer the tone by the position of the syllable or word within a phrase or sentence. This was indeed a hard language. However, I have always considered Chinese a beautiful language. And I recognized that China was emerging as a potentially important global strategic power.
I went to work diligently, studying one-on-one with a soldier linguist. Our lessons were based on a study book that included the English translation of phrases, their Chinese characters, and the pinyin phonetic representation of those characters. Each of these lessons was accompanied by a tape recording of the words and phrases, which I had to repeat by rote. This sounds much simpler than it actually was.
Despite my other duties, I made time to take my Chinese lessons several times a week. My progress was glacial.
But I stuck to it, even though I had to admit I would never become proficient in the language. At the end of four months of the hardest mental work I have ever performed, my instructor and I agreed that I had given Mandarin Chinese my all. I had completed Lesson One. She did not recommend I continue.
I told my officers that they were released from their language study obligation. But to my great pride, many continued their lessons. (Somehow, many still found time to work on their tans.)
In recent years, the Army has worked to provide soldiers with spiritual guidance, because the spiritual dimension is terribly important to soldiers as they perform their duties, often deployed away from their homes on confusing and tense peacekeeping assignments. Army chaplains years ago could simply provide generic character guidance based on Judeo-Christian traditions. Today, however, the Army is a much more diverse organization. The chaplain corps includes Buddhists, Muslims, and clergy from a variety of nonmainstream Christian denominations. Given this diversity, the interventional role of chaplains in shaping soldiers' lives has become more subtle than it was in years past.
In addition, the Army has inculcated a set of seven core values: honor, integrity, selfless service, courage, loyalty, duty, and respect. To a certain degree, each of these values runs counter to the prevailing trends in the civilian society from which young soldiers enter the Army. For example, surveys have revealed widespread erosion of honor and integrity among high school and college students who regularly cheat on tests and plagiarize with research papers they buy through the Internet. And many high school teachers note that the traditional level of respect between the generations has also eroded.
Yet, as was revealed through the extensive work of the Review Panel, successful Army leaders have been able to instill these values in young soldiers, their NCOs, and their officers. Again, this is never an automatic process involving pep talks and platitudes. Rather, the successful leader personally embodies these values, which without question have a spiritual, not just a secular, dimension. In a word, Army leaders who succeed demonstrate character. And I believe the most important core value underpinning that character is selfless service. If soldiers understand that their leader is sincerely devoted to their well-being and to accomplishing the mission, they will trust and follow that leader and modify their own behavior accordingly.
I have personally taken considerable satisfaction and spiritual fulfillment through service to others, both inside the Army and out. And I have found serving those who need help provides a synergistic connection that somehow bolsters both my physical and mental fitness.
This connection became clear in 1984, when I returned from my staff assignment in Germany to go to work in the Pentagon. I had been overseas for two and a half years, largely isolated from multichannel American television and the daily print media. I was bombarded by new information and no longer even knew how to have a telephone installed in my house. And I was struck by the avalanche of troubling news stories. There was another famine in Ethiopia. Homeless activists in the District of Columbia were on a hunger strike. And there was alarming talk about the political ascendancy of the Christian Right, which could impact women's reproductive rights.
I knew I had to become involved in at least some of these issues. But should I try to give money or volunteer my time? Or both?
I didn't have a lot of money to spare, but I did sponsor a little girl in the Caribbean through the Save the Children Fund. That gave me some sense of spiritual satisfaction, but, frankly, the effort was a bit impersonal. I wanted a closer human connection.
In Germany, I had volunteered through Army Community Services to give temporary shelter to battered women. But this was no great sacrifice. I had a two-bedroom apartment, and I was working such long hours that there was hardly time to interact with the women who came to stay there for a few nights.
The problem of homelessness in the District of Columbia was one I could not ignore, however. Even though I was working very long hours, I found a way to effectively be of service to homeless women. I volunteered to be one of the weeknight leaders at a House of Ruth shelter for homeless women located in a row house on a chaotic street in a drug-infested neighborhood of northwest Washington. Given my long hours at the Pentagon, this was an ideal way to be a volunteer. The shelter needed a responsible woman for the night shift, and I could perform the duties while sleeping. The shelter rules were simple but strict. No one entered or left after 8:30
p.m.
All the women had to be in contact with their social workers. They had to bathe daily and wear clean clothes. And they also had to perform housekeeping chores. Although many were emotionally disturbed and had difficult drug or alcohol problems, at least the shelter protected them from the street and gave them the chance to lead less dangerous and chaotic lives.
The experience taught me that, even if I was extraordinarily busy, I could find the time to volunteer. But I wasn't naive enough to believe my effort alone would achieve dramatic results. The poverty, abuse, and emotional instability that had driven these women to the streets in the first place were widespread. It was easier for most people simply to ignore these conditions.
One night, for example, I woke to hear a woman screaming at a man on the street outside the shelter. It sounded as if the argument might come to blows. I grabbed the phone and dialed 911 to report the situation.
“Okay,” the bored dispatcher said, “we'll send somebody to check.”
A few minutes later a police patrol car cruised down the street with its red lights flashing … right past the man and woman on the sidewalk. They moved off in the opposite direction. The show of force temporarily prevented the man from harming the woman. But she was still out there alone, at the man's mercy, after the patrol car had disappeared around the corner. I knew the reprieve would not last until morning.
It is scenes like this that conveniently convince so many of us that deep-seated social problems are impossible to solve. Nothing is impossible. But people must make an effort. And I do not want to be among those who will not even try. Everything a person does or does not do has an effect on our society. People have to ask themselves which side they want to be on—the side of change or the side of inaction.
Certainly, we don't have to attack the most intractable problems to make a difference. Former President Jimmy Carter has helped transform Habitat for Humanity into a nationwide volunteer program that builds decent inexpensive houses for low-income families. Christmas in April is a similar nonsectarian program that repairs and revamps homes, children's clubhouses, and shelters in both inner cities and blighted rural areas. Meals on Wheels provides nutritious hot food and companionship for isolated shut-ins across the country. These and literally hundreds of other volunteer efforts tap the wellspring of altruism that has always run deep in our country.
I've always found working with children rewarding. When I was in college at Southwestern at Memphis and later as a young lieutenant at Fort Devens, I took great pleasure as a Brownie Scout leader. Girls at that age are very enthusiastic, and the attention we give helps them know they are valued and respected. Beyond my work with battered women in Germany and homeless women in Washington, when I was stationed in San Antonio I joined a friend, a retired Army nurse, who fed homeless men living under a highway bridge. The Army War College at Carlisle hosted a Christmas tea for the residents of a local nursing home. Many of these elderly people did not have families in their final years and sincerely welcomed our kindness. But we officers reaching the pinnacle of our careers also gained priceless spiritual insights through these personal contacts. We saw what life could be like as it wound down. And this insight made us value even more the freedom and vitality we enjoyed in robust and successful middle age. Later, as a brigadier general at FORSCOM, I tutored a second-grade girl in reading at an inner-city school the Army sponsored. She was a shy child who had no concept of military rank, which only increased my personal connection to her. Whenever I would go on a trip, I'd show her my destination on the map, trying to widen her horizons beyond the confines of her world and awaken her imagination about other places.
During my last year in the Army and since I've left active duty, I have become involved with First Star, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of abused and neglected children.
I began working with First Star as a volunteer when it became clear that the need for such a program was dramatic. For example, the framers of the Constitution excluded three main groups from representation: slaves, women, and children. The first two groups through emancipation and suffrage have been granted full civil rights. While their struggle for equality is still underway, the battle for children's rights has only begun.
Attitudes in the legal profession, the judiciary, and society at large are still rooted in the pre-Victorian belief that children are the property of adults, that children's civil rights should be with-held because they lack the maturity to advocate for themselves. Almost universally, the rights of adults have priority over children's.
For example, no court in the land would knowingly force an abused woman back into the control of her abuser. But this is done to children every day in our courts nationwide. In late 2000, the shocking case of twenty-three-month-old Brianna Blackmond stunned the District of Columbia when a judge ordered her out of foster care and returned to a previously neglectful mother. Brianna died from blows to the head two weeks after being returned.
Abused adults who suffer injury in state protection have legal recourse to sue for damages. But children are barred from recourse.
On average nationwide, laws protecting animals from violence inflicted on them by their owners are substantially stronger than those protecting children from beatings by their parents.
This is the situation First Star addresses. Begun in 2000 by Hollywood producer Peter Samuelson, who founded the Starlight Children's Foundation in 1982 and the Starbright Foundation in 1990 (initiatives aimed at helping sick children), the mission of First Star is to build cooperation, trust, and common ground with child-focused groups to improve the basic civil rights of abused, maltreated, and neglected children.
First Star's mission is to create new initiatives to strengthen existing laws and policies that improve the safety, health, and family life of America's children. The nonprofit organization does so by trying to determine the best practices for local, state, and federal agencies and other organizations involved in at-risk children's welfare.
Other First Star missions include educating the public and specific groups involved with children about the challenges they face and how we can all help solve these problems. In addition, First Star advocates improved federal, state, and local laws and policies to enhance the lives of children.
First Star's programs include research on the vast and often confusing network of laws affecting the lives of children nationwide and is developing a continually updated database for professionals across the United States to keep themselves abreast of the latest issues and programs. The First Star Institute will be a center of excellence for the study and enhancement of laws affecting children and the psychology of children. The institute will provide continuing education for legal professionals in close collaboration with state bar associations.
First Star's legislative objective is to engender accountability for official action or inaction with a focus on the elimination of laws that deny a child the right to sue any state for malfeasance and which provide a shield of secrecy protecting institutions and officials from accountability.