Gentlemen,
Let's not forget why we today is a day off from school. Let's not forget who the real heroes are.
May God continue to bless this great nation.
Memorial Day and the “Shepherd in Combat Boots”
U.S. Army chaplain Father Emil Joseph Kapaun, who died May 23, 1951, in a North Korean prisoner of war camp, is pictured celebrating Mass from the hood of a jeep Oct. 7, 1950, in South Korea. He was captured about a month later. The Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for bravery, was awarded to the priest posthumously at the White House April 11, 2013. (CNS photo/courtesy U.S. Army medic Raymond Skeehan)
For many, Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, a day of rest to spend with family and friends. But for all Americans, this should be a time to remember the sacrifice of those men and women who, in the words of President Lincoln, “gave the last full measure of devotion,” sacrificing their lives to preserve our freedom. Masses will be celebrated today at theCatholic cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Washington, to remember those who died in service to the nation, and to pray for loved ones who died this past year.
“No one has greater love than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friend” (John 15:13). In recent weeks, Father Emil Kapaun – a Korean War chaplain who embodied those words – was remembered and honored in both a White House ceremony and at an outdoor Mass at Saint Jude Regional Catholic School in Rockville, Maryland.
Father Kapaun died on May 23, 1951, in a prisoner of war camp in North Korea, and he was buried in an unmarked grave. But his faith and his courage were never forgotten, especially not by the soldiers to whom he ministered on the battlefield and in the prison camp.
This man, remembered as “the shepherd in combat boots,” grew up on a family farm outside of Wichita, Kansas. After serving as a chaplain in World War II, he became a small-town parish priest back home. When the Korean War broke out, he again became an Army chaplain, and his regiment was one of the first sent into combat.
The soft-spoken priest soon became known for the Masses he celebrated on the hoods of Jeeps. He also rode an old bicycle to the front lines to minister to soldiers, and earned a Bronze Star for dodging machine gun fire and dragging wounded troops to safety.
Later, Father Kapaun ignored an evacuation order, opting instead to stay with wounded troops who were subsequently captured by the Chinese and North Korean forces that surrounded them. After helping a wounded Chinese officer, he stopped another Chinese soldier from executing a wounded American soldier, Herb Miller. Father Kapaun carried Miller on his back and helped him walk as the men were forced to make a long death march to a prison camp.
At the camp, Father Kapaun became a parish priest for the prisoners of war there, using his farm skills to get them sanitary drinking water and sneak them food. He prayed the rosary and gave hope to prisoners of all different faiths. A fellow prisoner later said the priest could turn a mud hut into a cathedral.
The guards saw the opportunity to rid themselves of Father Kapaun when he became ill, so he was taken to an isolated hut to die. He blessed his guards, repeating the words of Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them.” He told his fellow soldiers not to worry, “I’m going to where I always wanted to go.” A few days later, he died in that death house.
Those fellow soldiers helped collect money after the war to establish Kapaun Mount Carmel Catholic High School in Wichita. In 2001, a bronze statue showing the priest helping a wounded soldier to his feet was dedicated at the priest’s hometown parish, Saint John Nepomucene Catholic Church in Pilsen, Kansas, where the cause for his canonization was later opened in 2008.
Father Kapaun was posthumously awarded the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, on April 11. President Obama noted that when the Korean War ended 60 years ago, a group of POWs emerged carrying a four-foot cross they had fashioned out of firewood, with radio wire as a crown of thorns, to honor their priest, Father Kapaun. Some of those men, including Herb Miller, attended the White House ceremony.
“This is the valor we honor today – an American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, a love for his brothers so pure that he was willing to die so they might live,” President Obama said.
Earlier this month, Father Paul Lee, the pastor of the Shrine of Saint Jude Parish in Rockville, whose family was among the refugees who fled from Communist North Korea, celebrated an outdoor Mass on the hood of a Jeep for the students of Saint Jude School so they would remember the faith and sacrifice of this heroic priest.
This Memorial Day is a special time of prayer and remembrance, for Father Kapaun and for all those who have died to preserve our freedom. At a time when our freedom of conscience is increasingly challenged by government actions, we should stop to pray and thank God for their sacrifice, and resolve to stand up for the freedoms for which they gave their lives. One hundred and fifty years ago at Gettysburg, President Lincoln urged us to honor our military dead by taking up “the unfinished work” of safeguarding our freedom. That is our responsibility as Americans, this Memorial Day and every day.
May 9, 2013 — Scientists have identified many benefits for restoring oyster reefs to Chesapeake Bay and other coastal ecosystems. Oysters filter and clean the water, provide habitat for their own young and for other species, and sustain both watermen and seafood lovers.
A new study co-authored by Professor Roger Mann of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science adds another item to this list of benefits -- the ability of oyster reefs to buffer the increasing acidity of ocean waters.
The study, "Ecosystem effects of shell aggregations and cycling in coastal waters: An example of Chesapeake Bay oyster reefs," appears in Ecology, the flagship journal of the Ecological Society of America. It is co-authored by George Waldbusser of Oregon State University and Eric Powell of the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory at Rutgers University.
Concerns about increasing acidity in Chesapeake Bay and the global ocean stem from human inputs of carbon dioxide to seawater -- either through the burning of fossil fuels or runoff of excess nutrients from land. The latter over-fertilizes marine plants and ultimately leads to increased respiration by plankton-filtering oysters and bacteria. In either case, adding carbon dioxide to water produces carbonic acid, a process that has increased ocean acidity by more than 30% since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
A more acidic ocean concerns marine-life experts, who cite its corrosive effects on the calcium carbonate shells of oysters, clams, and other mollusks, as well as its possible physiological effects on the larvae of fish and other marine creatures. At current rates of increase, ocean acidity is predicted to double by 2100.
The Ecology paper reports on the research team's efforts to calculate past and present shell budgets for Chesapeake Bay, with a goal of estimating how effective healthy oyster reefs might be in moderating ocean acidity, and whether today's depleted reefs can withstand future acidity increases.
"Oyster shells are like slow-dissolving TUMS in the belly of Chesapeake Bay," explains Mann. "As ocean water becomes more acidic, oyster shells begin to dissolve into the water, slowly releasing their calcium carbonate -- an alkaline salt that buffers against acidity. An oyster reef is a reservoir of alkalinity waiting to happen."
The team's calculations suggest that in 1870 -- before people began large-scale harvesting of oyster meat and shells from the Chesapeake -- the amount of oyster shell exposed to Bay waters was more than 100 times greater than today, with an equally enhanced capacity to buffer acidity.
"Our data show that that oyster reefs likely played a key role in the pH budget of pre-harvest Chesapeake Bay," says Mann. "The amount of carbonate in the shells of living oysters at that time was roughly equal to the total amount of carbonate dissolved in the modern Bay. If similar numbers of oysters were alive today, they could take up about half of the carbonate that rivers currently carry into Bay waters."
Many people are familiar with the notion that the cloudy waters of the modern Bay would be clearer if over-harvesting and disease hadn't drastically reduced the oyster population and its capacity to filter particles from the water. Mann says, "Our study suggests a similar loss of ecosystem function, but in terms of buffering acidity rather than improving water clarity. This has significant ecological ramifications, but hasn't really been on anyone's radar screen."
Returning oyster shells to Bay waters -- a practice that began in earnest in the 1960s to restore reefs for food and filtering -- has helped buffer acidity in the Bay, but to nowhere near historical levels. Today, scientists estimate that the Bay loses 100 million bushels of oyster shell each year to harvesting and corrosion in Maryland waters alone, despite the return of 20-30 million bushels of shell through dredging and restaurant recycling.
The study by Mann and his colleagues estimates that oysters now contribute only 4% to buffering of acidity baywide, whereas they were responsible for 70% of all baywide buffering in 1870.
Looking towards the future, the team's concern is that oyster reefs in the modern Bay -- fewer and smaller than their pre-harvest counterparts and featuring smaller oysters -- may be unable to keep pace with the increasing acidity of Bay waters.
"The shells of dead oysters degrade rapidly in estuarine environments," says Mann, "with a half-life of only 3 to 10 years. For a reef to maintain the structure needed to support future generations, oysters must grow fast enough and large enough so that their rate of shell production exceeds that of shell degradation."
The optimal rate of shell addition, says Mann, "occurs with larger, older animals that contribute more shell carbonate per mortality event." But, he adds, "the onset of disease has unfortunately reduced the life span and maximum size of Bay oysters, thus compromising the shell budget."
"What's worrisome about this is that the shell reservoir is getting smaller and smaller," says Mann. "Could we reach a tipping point where increasing acidity so overwhelms the decreased buffering capacity of dead shells that it then begins to significantly affect live oysters, further limiting their ability to add shell to the alkalinity buffer? If so, we could end up with a negative feedback loop and a worst-case scenario."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided byVirginia Institute of Marine Science. The original article was written by David Malmquist.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- George G. Waldbusser, Eric N. Powell, Roger Mann.Ecosystem effects of shell aggregations and cycling in coastal waters: an example of Chesapeake Bay oyster reefs. Ecology, 2013; 94 (4): 895 DOI: 10.1890/12-1179.1
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.