By Steve Stricker

Columnist

Hope:  “a feeling of optimism and expectation that something desired will happen or that events will turn out for the best.” Without hope there is nothing but despair.

This Friday, March 29, marks the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War ending – the last US personnel were evacuated in April 1975.

Graduating from Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) August 1968 with diploma in one hand and draft papers for the US Army in the other. A minute later upon completion of Basic and AIT at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO, received orders for Vietnam and served there from July 1969 to July 1970. 

From fraternity to Army was a mind scrambler, especially Vietnam. Dreams of moving forward from college to a nice life vanished like gun smoke and I was left pondering how I would die and what it would feel like….

July to December 1969 was wrought with danger and I should have been dead a dozen times.  Then there was hope.  Word was Bob Hope and his amazing Christmas Show was coming to Long Binh.  Watching this unreal show from home on Christmas Day with hundreds of jungle-clad soldiers like me with funny Hope and beautiful, real girls, was so surreal…and I found myself laughing for the first time in a very long time.

Bob Hope salvaged my 1969 Christmas, is one of my all-time heroes, and I still can’t wrap my head around going from should have been dead to being jerked back to a facsimile of the real world.  Knowing I still had seven months remaining in that hell hole, without hope of returning home, was bittersweet to see this show and didn’t allow myself to let go of the fact that I was dead and had to accept it to face all the crap that was ahead.

Finally, thankfully, unbelievably God allowed me to come home and faith took the place of hope. To hope for something was to experience possible disappointment as that came from my wants. But faith was giving my life, wants, hope, to God, His guidance, and whatever happened to me was what God knew was best for me.

Faith: “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Ah…but of course, with faith also comes hope. But with faith comes the power of God to make it happen and if not, faith allows us to believe that it was for our good if something hoped for did not happen.  Like ending an engagement to a professed atheist, way unequally yoked. WHEW!! Thank you, God! Without faith I don’t exist….

I am so thankful to be out the other side of those two recent back-to-back pacemaker procedures within one month. Am praying, hoping, that the Ejection Fraction (EF) is what both docs expect – 30-35% very acceptable, along with this new energy they said I should expect, am experiencing, and that it is for real and not just from giving up alcohol for Lent. Wow!

Submitting this last Thursday, a cold first day of Spring, won’t know how my NCAA March Madness Basketball Brackets are doing until tomorrow or how Ole Miss men did against North Carolina or Ole Miss women against Ball State, but – Go Ole Miss Men and Women!

And – GO OLE MISS BASEBALL!

Steve is extremely thankful to be alive in Camelot, AKA, Oxford.