Self Evident Truths: Say a Prayer for Peace...

Vol 1 Issue 17

“Little ones to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong”

Andrew Kinard USMC

Big Jim Booker was an old friend of the family. A street lawyer who championed many lost causes including being an ardent Republican at a time when being Republican was not nearly as popular as it is today. Jim died a few years back and his wife Anne remarried. Manfred Haxton was a retired corporate attorney and close friend to the Bookers. His wife died of cancer. It was an understandable marriage. I knew both families well. A son, Jim, Jr. graduated from high school and college with me and a daughter, Mary Haxton was a brief dating acquaintance when I was in high school.

I was pleased to hear Anne Booker Haxton’s voice on the phone. She was selling her home and moving to a retirement community. She found a print that used to hang in Big Jim’s office. One she knew I would love to have. I soon found myself sitting in the den with the parents of two old high school classmates. The small talk was a about their children and grandchildren. Anne bragged about Jim’s children and in turn, I told of my two children. Then I looked to Manfred and asked a simple question. His answer still churns in my mind.

“Where is Mary living these days?” I inquired. I knew less of Mary than I knew of Jim Jr. It seemed to me that she married a doctor and maybe was a nurse herself. Expecting that the small talk would continue, I was taken aback by his response. “During the present crisis, she resides in Chevy Chase, Maryland.” Present crisis? Tears welled in the old man’s eyes. Thankfully, Anne intervened and walked across the room and picked up a photograph and handed it to me.

Andrew Kinard is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He is a handsome young man with closely cropped strawberry blonde hair. The 24 year old son of Dr. Harry Kinard and Mary Haxton Kinard of Spartanburg, S.C. is a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corp. His appearance belies his age. Absent the dress blue uniform of the United States Marine Corp, he would be hardly mistaken as a warrior.

He was leading a patrol in Anwar Province, Iraq in October 2006 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device buried in the sand. It was remotely detonated. The blast hurled him 20 feet in the air. His last command was for his men to form a perimeter. His legs were blown from his body. Seventy pints of blood sustained his life. When his heart stopped beating, the attending corpsman brought him back to life time and again. At the aid station, a Colonel held his hand. No one thought he would live.

His family was with him when he arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He was unconscious and was breathing with the aid of a ventilator. Andrew was hardly recognizable. With shrapnel wounds marking his face, tubes sustaining his life, and a noisy machine helping him breathe, he was hardly the same man his sister Katherine remembered.

“Does he know I am here?” Katherine asked the nurse. “Andrew!” the nurse shouted into his ear. His eyes opened. He gazed at Katherine. As their eyes connected she knew her brother was going to live. So with care, she knelt beside his bed and began to sing a simple song their mother sang to them as children. “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”

I wrote Mary Haxton Kinard a note today. I have not seen nor spoken with her for over 20 years but I wrote anyway. I told her of her father’s tears and how I have also cried for her son. I thanked her for her sacrifice and proclaimed her son a hero and patriot. I don’t know if my words will be of comfort to her but I could do nothing else. For as I held the picture of Lt. Andrew Kinard, resplendent in his dress blues and listened to the story his grandfather told – for that moment he was my son as well.

Say a prayer for Lt. Andrew Kinard USMC. Ask that God’s Grace will sustain him and his family. Thank God for the miracle of life and the nobility of sacrifice. For a moment embrace him as your own child and shed a tear.

Postscript: This was written in the spring of 2007 and thankfully Lt Kinard survived...

* Andrew appears with Trace Adkins in a moving performance in 2009 CMT Awards shoow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkaVRZoac_s&feature=related

* Andrew is now a law student at Harvard

http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/spotlight/public-service/21_soldiers.html