Prologue

Captian America
March 1941 to March 2007

I wish that I could say it was a pleasure to be here. I think if I could say that, then things would somehow be alright. If not alright, perhaps they would be a bit better then they are now. Because right now, we all know how things are.

I feel that I'm not supposed to be the one doing this, that somehow my best attempt will fall short. Barnes should be here. Or Jones, or Fury, or Carter, or Sam. Not me, I was never supposed to be the one to do this. I'd have thought that he might even have asked Stark to be here, anyone but me. But here I am, and I'm going to try my best.

He was the best of us, and by us, I mean all of us who ever pledged alligence to the red, white and blue. When I say that he was the best of us, that is by no means a measure of his skill, or of his muscle, but it is a measure of his heart. For that is why he was who he was to each of us. Simply a 90 pound weakling, with a heart bigger then the Lousiana Purchase.

Truth be told, I never had the honor to meet the man. Which is partly why I am so surprised to be speaking to you today. Like I said earlier, my best attempt will fall short. But we all know what he would say to that, something to the affect of;
"Son, you did your best. That is all we could ask of you."
He was annoying that way wasn't he?

1941, a year that the world held it's breath. A housepainter from Austria was making quite a splash in Poland, and the trains were running on time in Italy. Edith Pealf was singing her heart out in France, a public appearance director in Washington DC was trying to figure out how he could continue to hide a wheelchair from the public eye, and a young man from Brooklyn only wanted to serve his country.

4F, these days it sounds like a coordinate on a corporate conference room map. But to a boy from Brooklyn, it was nearly the end of the world. He begged, he pleaded, he cried, and they sent him away. But one man took pity on that boy, saw him for what he might be, and not for what his body said he was.

Well, we all know what happened next, we know about the rocket, and we know about the cold icy north Atlantic ocean. Thanks to recently declassified documents, we now know about the cube, AIM, Hydra, and SHIELD. Some privledged few know about the punch to the jaw of Thanos, Diamond Back, and even about Agent 13.

Do accomplishments make a man? Or is it a man that makes a man? Was he simply the sum of his deeds? Perhaps he really was what the newsreels called him, perhaps he was the hope and dreams of our great nation. Or perhaps he was just what he claimed to be, simply a man doing what his country asked of him and no more.

To many of us he was a antique, a piece of a world lost to the pages of time. A world where being proud to be an American did not mean that you were an inbred uneducated red neck. He came from a world that being proud to be an American meant, that you worked hard, paid your taxes, contributed to the local policemans ball, and put a dollar in the collection plate every Sunday. Not because you could get a kickback from it, but because it was what you
did because you were an American.

To him being an American meant something, it meant that you were blessed with the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness. A freedom that carried with it a responsibility to that very freedom. A responsibility to preserve and continue freedom. With your thought, word and deed you were expected to spreed, respect, and enjoy this blessing of freedom and priveledge. No one exemplified this more then he did.

He touched my life in a way that no one else ever will. He touched my life by simply being who he was, and by living up to who we said that he was. Because of that, I will hold him in higher reguard then I will any other man. But that is not why I am here today, I am here to speak of him and to remind you of his life. Because if we remember him, is he truly departed from our lives? If we hold him close to our hearts he will always be here with us.

When I leave here today, I will carry a piece of him inside of my heart with me. I would like to ask each of you to do the same, but I can not do that today. He would only want you to carry a piece of him inside of you, if that was what your heart asked you to do. So in his honor, I would ask of you, to only carry a piece of him with you if that is what you would like to do.

As I said earlier, I'm not supposed to be the one doing this, but sometimes one man's heart can override what the world tells them not to do.

He would have thanked you for being here tonight, please drive safely.

originally written March 7, 2007