Integrity As Legacy

Integrity: the center of personal character, doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons

Integrity is our only real possession. Only we know, for sure, if we really possess it. It costs nothing save the constant effort to secure it. It is little noticed except by the scorn of skeptics. Not made of atoms or molecules it defies science yet it is our eternal legacy. Sought by paupers and kings it tarnishes easily and can be easily lost forever. Whereas it fits every soul that tries it on, its conditions are specific and absolute. Neither learned nor taught, integrity defines the center of our being as either fact or a vacancy. While wisdom entails knowing the right thing to do, integrity is doing it at the right time and for the right reasons. Since it can neither be copied nor commanded it eludes thieves and tyrants. It’s most remarkable aspect is its legacy to give a life meaning for successive generations.

A conversation with a former student and now friend, Maxwell Hollihan, an Apple Genius, prompted this reflection. We revisited a landscape often trodden over 45 years of teaching and mentoring; finding the meaning to a life. As a child, I thought of legacy as my inheritance of material goods and money. At 71 years this month on the 31^st I now know to put away such a childish notion. Personal integrity is the only legacy we have to give a generation to follow. And if strong enough, for many more generations to follow that. Examples come to mind easily.

Since integrity is attainable by anyone, let’s bypass the easy ones, Christ, Gandhi, King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and take a more contemporary example: Fredrick Downs, Jr. Who? Thanks to Desolation Sound novelist, Fraser Heston for introducing me to this man of integrity as a legacy.

In 2008 during a C-SPAN host Brian Lamb asked Mr. Downs;

LAMB: How many books have you written?

DOWNS: Three books. The first one was the "Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War" and that covered that period of time when I was in Vietnam in '67 and a little bit in '68. Then "Aftermath," that takes place that year in the hospital, what it was like to go through that process and recover and get adjusted to my new kind of life. And then about 20 years after that, General John Vessey, Former Chief of Staff who was President Reagan's presidential emissary to Vietnam on POW-MIA affairs. Well, he sent me over there to review the Vietnamese prosthetic program. And so I wrote a book about those experiences. I made about 13 trips and I wrote about the first four trips and it was called "No Longer Enemies and Not Yet Friends."
(Source: http://www.c-span.org/video/?205200-1/qa-fred-downs-jr)

The New York Times introduced Mr. Downs to the reading audience with these words from their review of his third book.

"No Longer Enemies, Not Yet Friends" is an account of the five trips Mr. Downs made to Vietnam in 1987 and 1988 as part of the Reagan Administration's effort to prod the Vietnamese Government into helping to account for the roughly 2,400 American servicemen still missing in action in Indochina. Under the direction of a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., Mr. Downs, who is the director of prosthetics for the Veterans Administration, was assigned to a team whose mission it was to assess Vietnam's medical needs -- everything from artificial limbs to aid for blind children.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/26/books/this-time-he-came-in-peace.html )

Strange, is it not, how integrity is prompted by incongruous, even disturbing events? In 1967, just four months into his first tour of duty, 23-year-old Second Lieutenant Fredrick Downs, Jr had his left arm blown off above the elbow by a ‘Bouncing Betty’ land mine in Vietnam during that seemingly endless barbarism of insanity. Once tripped this particular anti-personnel mine leaps into the air and explodes from groin to head level usually ripping off arms. Never a nuanced thinker Downs battlefield logic was real and direct.

“The philosophical arguments in favor of man’s ability to resist the slide into barbarism sound noble and rational in a classroom or at a cocktail party. But when the enemy is bearing down, bent on taking your life away from you, it’s not his country against your country, not his army against your army, not his philosophy against your philosophy-it’s the fact that that son-of-a-bitch is trying to kill you and you’d better kill him first.”
― Frederick Downs Jr., The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War

During his one-year hospitalization Downs nurtured no love of ‘dinks’ (Marine slang for Vietnamese both friend and foe). He hated every one of them. So, you say ‘Ok, how is this guy a candidate for ‘integrity as legacy’? Wait for it. It’s coming.

It was precisely because he got his arm blown off in Vietnam in 1967, precisely because he was fitted with a crude prosthesis in hospital, precisely because he struggled with a hatred for the ‘dinks’ responsible for his physical pain and loss, that Fredrick Downs was capable of finding his integrity if the opportunity presented itself. That opportunity was afforded him working in the Veterans Administration after he got out of the hospital. In that interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN in 2008, Down’s described his job;

Well, I'm the Chief Prosthetic and Clinical Logistics Officer for the Veteran's Health Administration for the VA. And I've been the chief in charge of prosthetics for 28 years. One of my jobs, when I came in 28 years ago, was to ensure that all American Veterans would be able to get the state of the art prosthetic equipment. And so that, from the beginning, has been my task, my mission and since I use these devices and me and my friends use these device is why I have a personal interest in it but, of course, it's the mission and it's a mission that I love. And so what is going on out there? What is happening? And the world - for the Veterans of America, they deserve the best and Congress and - has ensured that they will provide them the best. It's my job to make sure that we're on top of that.

In 1988, Downs got a call from General John Vessey. The President wanted Fred to set up an advanced prosthetics technology program from the Vietnamese as good as the one he set up for American vets. His achievements establishing a legacy of integrity in doing just that is chronicled in Down’s third book. He became friends with one Vietnamese surgeon in particular Dr. Bui Tang who often stayed with the Down’s family in Maryland. Towards the end of the book Downs’s transformation into a man of integrity as a legacy is best described in his own words reacting to watching Dr. Tang cradle Fred’s sick daughter, Abigail, singing Vietnamese lullaby’s to help her sleep.

"I watched this tableau from the doorway, measuring it against scenes from my past. I knew that if our countries went to war the next day, both Tung and I would dutifully become enemies again. . . . The difference would be, now that I knew him, I would not take any joy in his death, only sorrow at the ways of man.This is the way with enemies, this is the way with friends. SEARCH-AND-ENJOY

The trip through the Vietnamese countryside was something I never tired of. People were working everywhere: in the fields, along the road, hoeing, chopping wood, fishing, herding ducks, planting, making bricks, herding buffalo and cows.

The villages we drove by on these back roads always reminded me of the war. Villages had always meant Vietnam to me. During the war, my platoon and I lived next to villages and patrolled through them. In contested territory I had burned villages as part of search-and-destroy operations, searched through the "hootches" looking for contraband, made prisoners of anyone in the villages I suspected of being a bad guy, destroyed the stored rice we found if we thought it was being used to support the enemy. There were times we had fired into the villages because the enemy was there among the people. All of these actions were part of our job and we were rewarded for doing it well.

In fact, in those days I never thought of the villages as anything other than a cluster of meaningless primitive straw and mud huts. I knew people lived in the "hootches," but I never thought of them as homes. I never thought of myself as destroying someone's home.

I did not realize or care that the villages were the history, the guts and the backbone of Vietnam. -- From "No Longer Enemies, Not Yet Friends."

Legacy: anything of value handed down from the past, as from ancestor or predecessor, an endowment, gift, heritage or benefaction to be cherished and passed on

So, at last Max Hollihan asked me “How to I build integrity as legacy?” I recommended a little drill to help him see the way on his journey.

“Pick five people whose opinion of you deserves respect. These are people who know you better in some ways than you know yourself. Ask these five to list, in bullet form, five reasons they like and admire you. Then, compare the lists of these 25 reasons and find the common denominators. I started Max off with my list of reasons why I like and admire him;

· intellectual curiosity

· ethical ideals

· search for meaning

· committed to social justice,

· integration of science and spirituality

Max agreed with my list and with the notion that from just these alone he can fashion his legacy through doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.

"When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two." --- PLATO, The Ring of Gyges