Filter of Hope
I am sitting at my desk with a glass of cold water nearby. My doctor tells me to “stay hydrated,” and I’m on it. But did you know that nearly 800 million people have little or no access to clean drinking water? This is especially true in very poor countries like Haiti. My granddaughter, Morgan Bryant, has made many…Read More
New Book: The Little Orangemen
In 1960 I was thirteen years old and living in the small town of Cramerton, North Carolina. That fall I played football for the Cramerton Pop Warner football team. I was bigger than the average boy my age, certainly over five feet, nine inches tall, which made me an awkward-looking giant among my eighth-grade peers….Read More
A Tribute to a WWII Soldier
Today marks the day that President Roosevelt said would live in infamy, the day the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941. As a friend of mine might say, “What were they thinking?” Prior to that surprise attack, many in America were disinterested in engaging in what they believed to be a foreign war….Read More
Grateful for Their Service, Sacrifice
When my father, the Rev. Clarence McMahan, turned eighteen on April 10, 1945, he was immediately drafted into the United States Navy. Following boot camp, he was assigned to the massive naval base at Norfolk, Virginia where an important skill got him a job well above his Seaman First Class pay grade. He could type….Read More
Honor: Senator John McCain
Like all the students and graduates of military academies and schools, my officer training classmates and I pledged our commitment to the Army’s Code of Conduct. This code said that we would follow the rules of the school, the military services, the Constitution, and laws of the United States of America. Fulfilling our duties was…Read More
The First Time
Darius Rucker sings a song entitled “For the First Time” in which he asks the following question: “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” In February 1967 I was sleeping with twenty other soldiers on the second floor of a World War II era army barracks at Fort Sill, Oklahoma….Read More
Our Other Heroes
A kind, generous and good person died recently. Her name was Sara Beaty. Sara’s husband, John, was a career military man before the family returned to Dallas, North Carolina more than two decades ago. Sara stood by her courageous husband, an Air Force pararescue veteran of more than twenty years. Among his jobs was to…Read More
My Books
