All sense of myself
Melts into the moment as
Otherness subsides.
Bubbling Happiness
Wells within my Heart as
Unreasonable Joy.
An Unsung Hero
An unsung hero waits at home;
While we who serve the world do roam.
Who holds the fort while we’re away;
Who takes command and leads the way.
One whose life is full of “byes”;
Who takes her lumps and seldom cries.
Who does her work with little praise;
Who brightens nights and softens days.
A lover, a mother, a friend and a nurse;
Who puts herself second to make others first.
A source of care who’s always there,
No matter what, who, when or where.
She’s loved the most when we’re alone;
By ourselves and far from home.
When most we feel the void she fills;
And know the lonely heart she thrills.
Her smile, her words, her loving glance;
They touch the soul and life enhance.
To her our highest praise we give;
Our love, ourselves, the life we live.
Yet how we feel, oft left unsaid;
Is heard with heart and not with head.
So here’s to her, the loving wife;
Who gives herself and shares our life.
1982
An Unsung Hero History
The Unsung Hero was written in 1982 at the request of Dick Parker, a retiring Chief Master Sergeant, who felt our wives deserved a tribute similar in spirit to A Last Salute, a poem traditionally used to honor departing Military Airlift Command aircrew members.
Using my wife Sandy and our 14 years of “good-byes” as a model, I sought to put into words how absent husbands feel, though seldom adequately express. Much to my surprise, and more to Sandy’s, who suggested the possibility of Divine inspiration, the fruit of my labor did seem to strike a respondent chord in the hearts of its intended audience.
In addition to its use as a departing wives tribute at McGuire AFB, the Unsung Hero later appeared in the Military Airlift Command’s (MAC) Airlift Journal, once in 1985 and again in 1989. Also used as a departure gift for wives at Dover AFB, Delaware and Altus AFB, Oklahoma, the poem eventually took on a life of its own. Witness the 1991 report of a Pan Am 747 Captain who advised that the Arkansas Air National Guard had presented copies to its wives in the mid-1980s. More recently the Unsung Hero appeared in the August 1995 issue of the Airline Pilots Magazine.
Having passed along copies to most of the military, Pan Am and United pilots I have flown with, I found that An Unsung Hero had strong appeal not only for military wives, but their civilian counterparts as well. Not only was the poem warmly received, more often then not I was told that it had being framed and now hung in an honored place at home.
With this thought in mind, it is my fervent hope that the present version of this humble tribute may come to the attention of a much larger audience of equally deserving Unsung Heroes, irrespective of how absent their husband may be.
God Bless, Speed and Keep
Rich Note: Appendix C, “An Unsung Hero (Wive’s Poem), There Shall Be One Flesh,” in a “section by section” sampling of “Out of My Mind and Back to My Senses”(OOMM). For those whose interest might be piqued or experience a heartfelt resonance with what is shared, I would highly recommend downloading the Amazon Kindle sample of OOMM, as it effectively constitutes both a synoptic and seminal, 59 page “mini-book .”]
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