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Honoring All Kinds Of Commitment

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: November 12, 2008

ST. LEO - On a morning so divinely ideal for flag-waving and speech-making it surely was kissed by the Creator enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the defenders of Mr. Jefferson's flame eased into oak-shaded folding chairs to bask, again, in words that never go stale.

Surrounded by nearly 300 other patriots, about two dozen military veterans were thanked, honored and blessed. In the interest of extending liberty's reach to the oppressed and terrorized while preserving it here, they had gone above and beyond.

This surviving few, this intergenerational band of brothers, went where many of us did not, could not or would not. From Anzio to Guadalcanal and from Inchon to the DMZ to the fall of Baghdad, conscripts and volunteers alike have distinguished themselves in ways a grateful nation never can adequately express.

But it tries. Tuesday, as nearby abbey bells tolled the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the small university with a big and enduring commitment to the U.S. armed forces did its part.

A Link And A Circle

The operational link between Saint Leo University and the American military, now 35 years old, is nothing less than "the circle of life," said university President Arthur Kirk. Troops defend the nation so that a campus such as Saint Leo's can flourish; in turn, Saint Leo nurtures an academic culture that values deployed distance learners no less than its resident students.

That balance is much of what appealed to Robert Tester, a 26-year-old Saint Leo sophomore history major who - this compromises no classified documents - has had a hand in some history-making of his own. Currently an Army ROTC corporal, Tester still wears the Airborne Ranger patch he earned for leaping from perfectly good aircraft over Afghanistan (2005-06) and in the latter stages of the Iraq surge (2007).

Why airborne? "I could tell you the answer you want to hear," Tester says mischievously. "Or I could tell you the truth." OK, truth. "The Army was paying $3,000 to go to jump school."

Dutifully, if newly, married, Tester signed on and handed the bonus to his bride and Homosassa Lecanto High sweetheart, the former Jennifer Albury.

It was the summer of 2001. Tester was 18, freshly minted as a high school graduate, husband and Army enlistee. The offspring of career Army parents and descended from grandfathers who served nobly in World War II and Korea, Robert Tester "had no doubts" about where his future lay.

Freedom's Stirring Summons

Then came 9/11, summoning Tester, like his grandfathers, to warrior duty in a supremely dangerous world. And yet, each Veterans Day when he pulls on the appropriate uniform - Tuesday it was desert fatigues for the dozen ROTC cadets - he thinks not of his eight years of active duty but of the old men leaning on their canes or held steady by their children against flag-snapping winds.

"Dad always talked about this feeling of accomplishment" from serving in the Army, Tester says. "The veterans from World War II and Korea, they know what that means.

"I wanted to feel it for myself."

Tuesday, wrapped in a morning the Almighty made, on a campus that bears constant witness, America proclaimed its indebtedness. Tester, history major and veteran of two foreign conflicts, saw the old men who sacrificed their youth to freedom's call and tingled with the sense that he had begun to pay it forward.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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