If it weren’t for people like Keith McLean...

It all started out innocent enough. As diligent parents, Belinda and I faithfully attended parent-teacher conferences. When Derek was in sixth grade at the neighborhood elementary school, his teacher told us that he could use a little extra credit in his history class. I asked what he needed to do and she said, “Well, you know a lot of people. Perhaps you could find someone who is a World War II vet to come into our school and give the kids a first-hand account.”

My father was a World War II vet, but he lived 400 miles away from our home in Mandan…plus dad wasn’t one to speak up in public. So then I thought of my good friend Keith McLean, a retired bridge engineer in Bismarck. I first met Keith in 1986 when we were both members of the Bismarck Lions Club. A couple of years later and I would be secretary for the club and he would be the president. I liked the way that he ran the business meeting and asked him where he learned that skill. He told me it was Toastmasters.

In 1989, I joined Toastmasters and eventually became the District Governor, and my biggest supporter was probably Keith. He would even go with me to Minot and other places that I had to visit…mostly to keep me company.

Keith McLean when he was a bridge engineer. 

Keith also told me in 1988 that he thought our choice for Derek’s name was inspired because it sounded like “Dick Van Dyke” only it wasn’t.

So I had a good idea that if I asked Keith to speak to Derek’s 6^th grade class, the answer would probably be “Yes.” The next time I saw him, I asked him and he agreed to speak.

I met Keith one afternoon at Custer Elementary in Mandan and we went to Derek’s classroom. I’ll never forget Keith’s introduction. First, he wrote “1 million” on the chalk board. He told the kids, “that’s how many U.S. soldiers were in World War II and they were all over the globe.”

Then he wrote down the number “one” and he said, “I was one of them. I fought in the Battle of the Bulge and I carried a radio on my back, so if you are looking for a comprehensive history of the war, I can’t do that. But I can tell you what I saw in the European Theater as the Allied Forces battled the Nazis.”

Wow, I thought, this was going to be exciting. But the sixth grade kids seemed to be ignoring Keith. They were noisy and moving around. I didn’t think Keith was getting the respect that he deserved, so I asked the kids, “How many of your grandpas fought in World War II?”

This was about 1999, and to my surprise, Derek was the only sixth grader whose grandfather fought in the big war. No wonder they weren’t paying attention. World War II sounded like a lecture on the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece to them.

So I tried another strategy. I wanted them to understand how important the war was to our freedoms that we enjoy today.

I wanted to say, “If it wasn’t for people like Keith McLean, you might be speaking German or Japanese today.”

That’s what I wanted to say, but at that moment, the weight of that statement hit me straight between the eyes. Because I knew it was true. Like the lyrics in the old Johnny Horton hit “The Bismarck” it was true that “the world depends on us.”

Anyway, when I tried to blurt something out about Keith and the million other brave soldiers, my voice cracked and I started crying.

Well, that got the kids attention, and they stopped fussing around long enough to listen to him…but it did something else too. Derek got teased by his classmates because his dad came to school and cried in front of them.

That night when Derek got home from school, he said, “Thanks dad. Now I only have to beat up half the kids in school for a month before they forget you came to class.”

Hopefully, he was only teasing me. But to this day, Derek reminds me of the time I invited Keith to his sixth grade class and his dad sobbed in public. Not one of my prouder moments, but thanks to Keith, my dad and the other million soldiers, we have enjoyed countless freedoms and economic growth that other countries can only look at with envy. And we still speak English.