Summer 2003

Left Behind

The 30th Anniversary March for Life to protest the Roe v Wade decision was over, and it seemed like the approximately 700,000 men, women, children, teens and religious that had shown up were packed into the Washington DC train terminal.

Police were everywhere, you couldn’t walk for fifteen feet without encountering another police officer; helicopters hovered back and forth above the city monitoring the march from over head. The weather was frigid and we couldn’t find our bus, my 13-year-old son and I had been coming to the March for 3 years and weather wise this was the worst. We had been searching for our buses for approximately an hour and half and were cold and tired. I kept my celphone close at hand in the hope that we’d get a call to help us locate our ride home.

The March had taken longer then usual due to the volume of people, construction work and barriers were everywhere which hampered the progress and at times the March would come to a standstill, it was nearing a quarter to five PM, the designated departure time.

We decided to take shelter inside the terminal and wait for the call, my son was starving and luckily there was a McDonald’s inside the terminal so he went for supplies. Finally at 5:15 the call came, the signal was faint and hard to hear. “Where are you?” said the voice of Joe Pellek, our fearless leader and President of Sussex County Right to Life. “I’m at the front of the train terminal, can you come get us?” There was a pause and then the reply, “We’re 15 minutes out of Washington and headed home, we couldn’t wait for you any longer, we looked for you all over the place, do you have money to get home?” I replied, “Yes, we’ll be OK!” and then the signal was gone.

It had been 14 years since I had been on a train, I looked at my son, Sam, and told him “we’re going for a train ride”, “Cool” he said with a smile, I admired his cheerfulness and youthful strength, we had been up since 5 A.M. twelve hours of traveling and marching and he was still as fresh as a daisy.

I looked up at the train schedule, the next train to New York was leaving in 10 minutes, I checked my pockets, all I had was my Amex and a $50. bill.

I said “come on, lets move it”, “Cool” was my son’s reply, (he has a gift for words). We fought our way to the ticket counter through the ocean of people, I approached the young woman and asked for 2 tickets to NY City, she briefly looked at me and asked me for a photo ID, I told her all I had were my Amex and 50 bucks, I explained to her that all my other things were on the bus headed for Jersey, that we had been at the March for Life and had been left behind.

The young woman’s transformation was immediate, she looked at my son and I and it was as if we had just been adopted!

“Give me your Amex” she ordered me politely, I quickly handed it to her. “Follow Me” she said with a smile, she walked us to the end of the counter, ran my Amex through, gave me the slip to sign, the whole time hurrying us along, she didn’t want us to miss our train. “I got you the cheapest rate” she said, and began to give us directions to our departure gate, she must have seen the tiredness in my eyes and said “Follow me”. My son and I snapped to attention and followed our newly adopted mother, quite a novelty for a 53 year old man and his 13 year old son.

She walked us to the gate, pointed to a spot on the floor at the end of the line and said. “Stand here and don’t let anyone cut in front of you!” As she walked away my son and I yelled “Thank You, Mom” she looked back and smiled “No Problem” she replied. And was gone.

The NYC train pulled in and the people on line quickly got on board, Sam and I found a seat and promptly made ourselves comfortable for the 5-6 hour ride. A young couple with 2 teenage daughters sat in front and across from us, the two girls talked excitedly across the aisle with their mother but I could see it was just a pretense to catch peeks at my handsome son. He couldn’t care less, the day had finally caught up with him and he was out like a light.

I had a brief conversation with the young couple and decided to call my wife. “Hi honey” I said, “guess where I am?” I quickly told her the situation and that we were OK and on the way home. She began to question me on the cost of the train tickets and wasn’t particularly excited with our situation, our son was going to miss two days of school instead of just one and it was costing us extra money.

I finally hung up and tried to catch a snooze, the train pulled into the Delaware Station and the young couple in front of us with the two girls grabbed their coats and luggage and got ready to disembark. I noticed the young man was glancing over at me not sure of what to say, he finally approached me and said “ My wife and I overheard your conversation with your wife” he said, “It was a good thing you and your son did, traveling all the way down to Washington and marching for the unborn babies, we want you to have this.” He quickly pressed $30 into my hand and headed down the aisle, his wife and daughters all smiled at me and marched out behind their dad.

The March for Life is a celebration of life as well as a pilgrimage for life, sometimes the things that happen on the way to the march and the things that happen returning from the March, the people you meet on this pilgrimage and the way you interact with each other are just as important as the March itself.

I went back to sleep, with the peace of mind of knowing that we had spent the day doing God’s will.