Spending time with our heroes

He was an old man with leathery skin and cowboy boots, sitting at a table in the Francis Marion, drinking a beer and chewing the fat.

John William Finn was in town for a USS Hancock Association reunion, and you wouldn't have known there was anything particularly special about him unless you recognized the gold star hanging from his neck on a light blue ribbon.

See, Finn was the first World War II recipient of the Medal of Honor.

With some prodding, and a dozen digressions, on that day four years ago, Finn -- a spry 97 at the time -- matter-of-factly related what he'd done to receive the nation's highest military honor.

He had been stationed at the Naval Air Station in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Finn found a .50-caliber machine gun on an instruction stand in the middle of a parking lot and started shooting at planes "with those dirty red balls" painted on them. He was hit by shrapnel more than 20 times, one piece hitting him hard enough to break his foot, but he did not stop.

On the day America suffered one of its worst sucker punches, Finn hit back. But he acted as though anybody would have done the same.

The right stuff

You can find a number of stories just as amazing as Finn's at the Congressional Medal of Honor Museum on the aircraft carrier Yorktown. It is an impressive place that does an admirable job documenting the true cost of freedom. Visiting the museum should be required for citizenship.

There you can learn about Charleston native Ralph H. Johnson, who threw himself on a grenade in Vietnam to save two fellow Marines. Or Robert Eugene Bush, a Navy Reservist who tended to fallen servicemen, administering plasma to the wounded during a battle on a Japanese island in 1945.

Then there's retired Marine Maj. Gen. James E. Livingston, who led his men into battle in the heavily fortified Vietnamese village of Dai Do. Wounded by grenade fragments twice, he ignored heavy enemy fire and kept fighting. When he was wounded a third time, leaving him unable to walk, he kept deploying men and supervising the evacuation of casualties, resisting efforts to evacuate him from the battle.

Livingston, who lives here now, calls the museum "a national treasure" that we're lucky to have.

He's right. And far too few people realize it.

True bravery, integrity

Schuyler Kropf reports today that the Congressional Medal of Honor Society's national convention will be held in Charleston in September. It's a chance to meet some of the 88 living recipients of the medal. They'll be available for autographs on the Yorktown one day and they'll attend a Citadel football game that weekend. There's even a gala planned, although tickets are expected to go quickly.

Unfortunately, John Finn won't be there to relate stories of Pearl Harbor or even sip a beer.

Finn died in May at the age of 100.

The moral is that it would be worth your time to visit with these heroes while they're here, to learn what bravery and integrity truly are. If the loftier notions of the occasion don't appeal, just go to hear those stories.

You'll never forget them.