On the Today Show earlier

this week, if you were tuned in, you would have witnessed the return of

the beautiful, gigantic aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. There is

nothing that I have ever experienced that is more sad and yet more exciting

than the departing of a ship or the arrival of a ship.

As I have stated before, my

father was in the military for over 20 years so we as a military family

traveled around the world as he served soldiers and their families as

an Army chaplain.

In those days, it was customary

to travel across the ocean by ship. In fact when we were assigned to Panama

in 1953-1956, we traveled for seven days, to and from Panama, stopping

in at Puerto Rico, on a ship. Then when we returned from Germany in 1966,

you were allowed to utilize the money the government would use to fly

your family home to the States and apply it on tickets aboard the "United

States," a luxury liner. We had a family meeting and all agreed to

take the ship and pay the difference.

When the ship departs New York

Harbor and all the relatives left behind are waving and crying and the

band is playing "Auld Lang Syne" that will bring a tear to the

hardest of hearts. Then when it returns to the same harbor you shed tears

of joy. Both are definitely "Kleenex" events.

The following story was provided

to me by Jeffery Green, serving in Korea for your freedoms and mine. Thank

you, Jeff.

Is the greatest sacrifice laying

your own life down, or is there something far greater?

Back in the days of the Great

Depression, a Missouri man named John Griffith was the controller of a

railroad drawbridge across the Mississippi River. One summer day in 1937

he took his eight-year-old son, Greg, to work with him. At noon, Griffith

put the bridge up to let ships pass and sat down with Greg to eat lunch

on the observation deck.

Suddenly a train whistle shrieked

in the distance. The Memphis Express, with four hundred passengers on

board, was approaching the raised bridge! Griffith ran