Principal Called His Father’s Dog Tags A Weapon
Earl Dunbar sat in the front row in his old uniform, the same one he’d worn at the funeral, his first sergeant stripes dark against the tan.
Beside him sat Gunny Wertz, his prosthetic hand resting on his knee, and Dot Pruitt in her husband’s pressed flight suit, and behind them row after row of men and women I recognized from church, from the Co-Op, from the diner, from funerals I’d stood at over the years without ever once imagining I’d be the widow at the front of one myself.
Some wore uniforms decades out of date. Most wore plain Legion caps. None of them wore anything they had not earned.
The superintendent, a heavyset man named Dr. Osterhaus who I had met exactly once at a ribbon cutting, stood at the side door with his tie slightly loose, looking at the crowd the way a man looks at weather he did not see coming.
Mr. Keene sat near the back, alone, in a gray suit, and when our eyes met across that packed room, I did not look away and neither did he.
The board chair, an older woman named Vonda Shuler who had taught home economics at the high school for thirty years before she ever ran for the seat, gaveled the meeting to order and looked out at a room three times its usual size with an expression that said she already understood, before a word was spoken, that tonight’s agenda had changed.
“We have,” she said slowly, “a public comment period. I believe quite a few of you are here for that.”
I walked to the small podium set up at the front, the flag case heavy and warm against my side, the manila folder in my other hand, and behind me I heard chairs creak as eighty or more people who had buried husbands and sons and fathers of their own sat forward to listen, and Earl Dunbar gave me one short nod, the same nod I imagine he gave young soldiers a hundred times across twenty-six years, a nod that means I’ve got your flank, now go.
I set the flag case on the podium ledge where everyone could see it, and I looked at Vonda Shuler, and I did not raise my voice at all.
“My name is Megan Follett,” I said. “Three weeks ago, my husband, Sergeant Ryan Follett, was killed in action while deployed with the Third Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart. Two weeks ago, this district’s dress code was used to tell my eleven year old son that his father’s dog tags were a weapon.”
I opened the case and turned it so the stars faced the room.
“I am not here tonight to ask you to fire anybody,” I said.
“I am here because a rule written to stop one terrible thing accidentally became a rule that punishes a grieving child for carrying his father’s name against his own chest. I am asking this board to look at that rule, and fix it, so no other family in this county ever stands where I am standing.”