7-21-25

Like many of you I take inspiration from great storytelling…..I grew up loving to

hear stories of heroes of old….comic book heroes who fought the bad guys…..and

sometimes I’d get a glimpse into something that a real person had done that

would amaze me and make me want to stand up a little straighter and do my

part……and truthfully, real heroes are all around us…..and the real stories of real

people doing the really hard things and overcoming are some of the best stories

of all…..especially the ones that run to the fight even when they don’t have to….

In that vein I just learned about a real life hero that I did not know about

before…..Everybody knows about Sam Walton….the small town Arkansas man

who had a big idea to build a modern day general store…..in 1962 Sam Walton

started Wal-Mart and by 1970 sales were approaching the billion dollar mark and

the company went public…..Sam Walton stayed humble but he was sure enough

multi-multi-multi-millionaire by the late 60’s…..none of his kids would ever have

to work a day in their lives if they didn’t want to….but that was not their

way…..and on of them, Sam Walton’s middle son John went on to become a sure-

enough hero going to the hard places to do the hard things…..1n 1968 John

Walton was a student at Wooster College….he had been a star football player in

High School….the All-American kid….but in 68 John told his Dad he wanted to

drop out of college and join the Army and go to Vietnam…..He said, “there’s a lot

of people talking about the war in dorm rooms, but I didn’t think they understood

it.”…….He wanted to know more about the conflict and what was going on over

there than he could get from a textbook or from the nightly news……so he did,

John Walton, son of one of the richest men in America, enlisted in the US Army

and volunteered to become a Green Beret…..he was humble about where he

came from…..he told his Army buddies that his Dad owned a five-and-dime store

in the south…..But John Walton, already in the extreme position of being a Green

Beret in war zone became a member of a legendary organization called MACV-

SOG….SOG, or Studies and Observation Group, was a clandestine group of

warriors that did everything that you see in the movies……raids, ambushes, rescue

missions, long range reconnaissance, working deep in enemy territory in small

teams…..in August of ’68 John Walton was a Special Forces Medic on a 6-man

recon team inserted into a crazy dangerous place called the A-Shau

Valley….Walton’s team landed in a hornets nest and became completely

surrounded by enemy soldiers…. of the six men on the mission one was killed, one

had lost a leg, another was severely wounded by small arms fire……John Walton,

ran from man to man administering life saving first aid, fighting and killing the

enemy, and rallying his team……when his team leader was wounded John Walton

took over….. the attack on their position was so fierce that he eventually had to

call in an airstrike on their own position to break up the enemy attack….. A South

Vietnamese helicopter pilot named Captain Thinh Dinh came in under heavy fire

and managed to extract the team…..Captain Dinh actually defied orders to get his

aircraft into the hot and hasty LZ……Walton helped load his men into the chopper

as rounds struck the overloaded aircraft until they were able to lift off……John

Walton, son of the richest man in Arkansas, was awarded the Silver Star for his

actions that day…..he stayed on and finished out his tour with SOG…..he came

home and became a crop duster and later formed his own aviation company…..in

2003 he flew his own personal aircraft to pick up Colonel Thinh Dinh, the same

man who had flown in to rescue him in the A-Shau valley, and bring him to a

reunion to honor his service……in 2005 John Walton died in a plane crash, and at

the time of his death was listed as the 4 th richest man in all of the United

States……That’s an amazing story…..an amazing story about a guy who went to

the fight and did the deeds even though he didn’t have to……..

Humble men do amazing things make for amazing stories…. I cannot think of a

hero…..whether real or fictional…..where the admirable quality of that hero is

based in taking the easy way out…… Conflict avoidance rarely works out…..that’s

not to say that the world should go around with everyone looking to pick a

fight….not at all…..but avoiding trouble simply because it is uncomfortable, or

fearful, is never going to be the right answer……

One of my favorite movies of all time was on recently…..it has a storyline much

like what I’ve just described….normal men doing abnormal things…..you may have

seen it and if you haven’t then I highly recommend it....in fact, any guy out there

who hasn’t watched it, I’m going to question your manhood until you do!.....the

movie is “Open Range” starring Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall and a great

supporting cast…..I won’t go too far into the movie plot but suffice to say it is a

movie filmed on an epic scale with huge vistas of the great western

plains…..Costner and Duvall play Charlie Wait and Boss Spearman…two rough but

honorable men herding their cattle across the plains until them meet up with a

rancher who doesn’t take to “free grazers”…..the gunfight at the end has been

rated as one of the most realistic and well-orchestrated gunfights in movie

history.....but while the scenes and the storyline and the cast are all solid….its the

quotes and the lessons that come from the movie that stick out to me the

most……this is a movie that teaches honor, and loyalty, and grit and hard

work……and it also teaches that most elusive lesson – that there will be times in

life when you have to face difficulty head on…..that pretending adversity doesn’t

exist does not make it go away, that allowing bullies to continue bullying does not

make the bullying stop, and that truthfully there is no respect in turning a blind

eye when others are being hurt……in one particular scene from Open Range the

main characters were making their presence known in the saloon and were well

received by some and not by others……Costner’s character Charlie Wait had just

faced down an accuser in epic style and several townspeople who lived under the

thumb of the local land baron were pleased but scared. The conversation went

like this:

Mack:

Shame what this town's come to.

Charley Waite:

You could do something about it.

Mack:

What? We're freighters. Ralph here's a shopkeeper.

Charley Waite:

You're men, ain't you?

Mack:

I didn't raise my boys just to see 'em killed.

Charley Waite:

Well you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse

than dying.

The underlying story was that peaceable men who had no quarrel were put in the

position of having to respond…..they knew that to not face their opposition was

worse than facing it……so they chose the hard route because hard ain’t easy but

hard is usually where solutions are found…..

In society as a whole we have sections of our culture who are infinitesimally small

in numbers but who glaringly make demands that all of the rest of society should

agree that right is wrong, and wrong is right, and corporations, churches, elected

leaders, and just plain folks stand idly by unable to bring themselves to say no,

and so it goes on……. And listen, hard can get ugly…..doing right can leave a

mark…..taking the high road might even make the trip a little longer……but

another one of those classic lines from “Open Range” had Costner and Duvall’s

character talking just before the major confrontation:

Boss Spearman: “It’s a pretty day for making things right”

Charlie Waite: Well, enjoy it, cause once it starts, its gonna be messy like nothing

you ever seen.”

But take note that “messy” didn’t mean don’t do it……it was just an

acknowledgment on their part that doing the right thing, dealing with their issues

with their faces forward, like the Bible says in Isaiah, to “set my face like flint”….is

something that may wind up being messy…..but it was the first part of that

conversation that really mattered….that is was a “pretty day for making things

right”…..

So my message today is don’t avoid things because they’re hard…..step into the

fray and make things right……Do the hard thing

and that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way….