Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the victims of Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, and with all of those who will return to work there in the coming days.
For those who may not know, Matt worked at the Navy Yard for the better part of seven years. He spent thousands of hours and hundreds of days at a desk in a building about a block away from the now-infamous building 197. He occasionally ate at its ill-fated cafeteria and walked through its halls. He worked with one of those who was killed there.
The news of this atrocity has brought a variety of feelings to our family, some of them unexpected. You might think that I in particular would have read the first headlines and thought, “I’m so glad we’re not in DC anymore,” but, surprisingly, I felt the reverse. I felt a strong longing to be in DC again, and so did Matt. In part, we missed our friends. We felt anxiety for those at the Navy Yard, while the thought of how our friends at 3CC and CUA would have supported us in such a circumstance revealed a sad lack in our lives here in Austin. But our longing also arose from the surreality of seeing images of a familiar place turned into a site of tragedy. We, and especially Matt, knew the Navy Yard, and the photos of M Street swarming with ambulances and police cars and heavily armed response teams were jarring. Like Sam Gamgee looking into Galadriel’s mirror and seeing his decimated homeland, our first instinct was to rush back, thinking that what we had seen as an image could not really be, and that if we were there at the actual spot, we would find it just as we left it. Would that we could.
I am and always will be proud of the work Matt did at the Navy Yard, both as an officer and a civilian. We should all be proud of the Navy Yard. So often the public image of the military serviceman is the soldier in uniform, at the controls of hi-tech equipment, deployed in foreign lands, or returning home to elated family. Those soldiers deserve their thanks. But there are others who, as the joke goes, “fly desks,” but who, as reality goes, support and enable everything and everyone that flies, drives, and sails. These servicemen and women may not face personal dangers daily, but the safety of every man and woman who does face such dangers is their first priority and that of their civilian colleagues as well. I get so tired of hearing people-- especially people who have no experience of life in Washington-- talk about “government bureaucrats” and federal employees as some sort of national ailment, implying that they are all in it for the fat pension and the job security or that they loaf around, push paper, and make life more expensive and complicated for hard-working taxpayers. My experience does not match this idea at all. The federal employees I knew, from Capitol Hill interns to State Department diplomats, were sincere, hard-working people who put in long hours at moderate pay because they sincerely cared about not just their job but their work: education, economics, domestic policy, international relations, aid and development... and, I might add, they all pay taxes. At the Navy Yard, the civilians no less than the active duty military work for the safety and function of our navy’s ships, and they do so with dedication, intelligence, and conscientious quality.
As we respond to the Navy Yard shootings, let us not see the twelve men and women who died primarily as victims of a sadly deranged gunman. Let us honor them as professionals whose work kept safe those who help keep the nation safe.
For those who may not know, Matt worked at the Navy Yard for the better part of seven years. He spent thousands of hours and hundreds of days at a desk in a building about a block away from the now-infamous building 197. He occasionally ate at its ill-fated cafeteria and walked through its halls. He worked with one of those who was killed there.
The news of this atrocity has brought a variety of feelings to our family, some of them unexpected. You might think that I in particular would have read the first headlines and thought, “I’m so glad we’re not in DC anymore,” but, surprisingly, I felt the reverse. I felt a strong longing to be in DC again, and so did Matt. In part, we missed our friends. We felt anxiety for those at the Navy Yard, while the thought of how our friends at 3CC and CUA would have supported us in such a circumstance revealed a sad lack in our lives here in Austin. But our longing also arose from the surreality of seeing images of a familiar place turned into a site of tragedy. We, and especially Matt, knew the Navy Yard, and the photos of M Street swarming with ambulances and police cars and heavily armed response teams were jarring. Like Sam Gamgee looking into Galadriel’s mirror and seeing his decimated homeland, our first instinct was to rush back, thinking that what we had seen as an image could not really be, and that if we were there at the actual spot, we would find it just as we left it. Would that we could.
I am and always will be proud of the work Matt did at the Navy Yard, both as an officer and a civilian. We should all be proud of the Navy Yard. So often the public image of the military serviceman is the soldier in uniform, at the controls of hi-tech equipment, deployed in foreign lands, or returning home to elated family. Those soldiers deserve their thanks. But there are others who, as the joke goes, “fly desks,” but who, as reality goes, support and enable everything and everyone that flies, drives, and sails. These servicemen and women may not face personal dangers daily, but the safety of every man and woman who does face such dangers is their first priority and that of their civilian colleagues as well. I get so tired of hearing people-- especially people who have no experience of life in Washington-- talk about “government bureaucrats” and federal employees as some sort of national ailment, implying that they are all in it for the fat pension and the job security or that they loaf around, push paper, and make life more expensive and complicated for hard-working taxpayers. My experience does not match this idea at all. The federal employees I knew, from Capitol Hill interns to State Department diplomats, were sincere, hard-working people who put in long hours at moderate pay because they sincerely cared about not just their job but their work: education, economics, domestic policy, international relations, aid and development... and, I might add, they all pay taxes. At the Navy Yard, the civilians no less than the active duty military work for the safety and function of our navy’s ships, and they do so with dedication, intelligence, and conscientious quality.
As we respond to the Navy Yard shootings, let us not see the twelve men and women who died primarily as victims of a sadly deranged gunman. Let us honor them as professionals whose work kept safe those who help keep the nation safe.
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| Matt with Lily at the Navy Yard in 2009. |
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