Send in the Marines

Recently a wicked winter storm of snow, sleet and freezing rain pummeled the South.

Ordinarily, this part of Virginia receives a few inches of snow several times a year followed by rising temperatures above 40 degrees melting it from streets and driveways. Not this time.

The streets and driveways in our neighborhood morphed into a gigantic ice rink. No mail or Amazon deliveries. No trash pickup. As seniors, we were homebound with below freezing temperatures forecasted for the next 10 days. Even the snowplows encountered problems removing the ice and never arrived in most neighborhoods.

After four days of being iced in, my senior next-door neighbor, Kim, texted me looking to hire someone to clear 100 feet of her sloped driveway, similar to ours.

“I don’t know of anyone,” I responded.

She soon noticed the driveway of a young couple across the street was cleared. She texted them to see who cleared it and found out it was the husband, Mark. He offered to help her later that day but refused payment. Kim texted me the good news.

In the meantime, my husband and I were just outside the back door to our garage with hot water and a shovel to break up a small area of ice so he could get the dog out without falling. As we were hammering away, I saw Mark in Kim’s driveway.

“Are you going to do that whole driveway yourself?” I asked. It seemed like a herculean task. He said he was, and that he could do ours after he finished Kim’s if we wanted.

“We sure do!” I said.

That afternoon he broke up the thick ice in large chunks with a shovel and pushed or tossed them aside. Kim’s driveway was cleared in less than two hours, and she slipped an envelope with cash into his pocket. That evening he shoveled ours with some help from my husband. Afterwards we decided to reward Mark with a gift certificate to a nice restaurant.

“I learned a little about Mark,” my husband said. “He served in the Marines for eight years.”

“No wonder he could shovel our driveways,” I responded.

I knew about the rigorous basic training for the Marines. It made sense that this young man was prepared to take on such a grueling task, all with a smile on his face. The next afternoon I saw Mark shoveling another senior neighbor’s driveway who had attempted to do it himself.

Galatians 6:9-10 (“Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people….)” reminds me of the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, which means “always faithful to those on our left and right, from the fellow Marines we fight alongside, to those in our communities for which we fight.”

I know at least three neighbors who are extremely grateful for the ‘more than good’ acts of this faithful former Marine. Semper Fi!