Seven years ago, I woke up around 6 AM for no good reason, turned on the television in the living room, and said "OH MY GOD" as I saw a replay of a jet smashing into one tower of the World Trade Center.

Still glued to the television as family members dressed and rushed into the room to witness my apparent second major heart attack, all we could do was watch as a second jet smashed through the other tower, this time as a live broadcast.

When a third jet crashed into the Pentagon, a place just one Metro stop from my old barracks at Fort Myer and home of the Old Guard, I had no doubt Americans of December 7, 1941, would have felt exactly the same way if there had been television back then, witnessing that attack with their own eyes as we witnessed the attack of this day in 2001.

Growing in the racially-mixed community of Encanto during 60s and 70s taught me many things about being an American.

I learned that when people came together for a common cause, then great things could be accomplished.

One night, while my father was driving most of the family back from his Shell station at Euclid and Division, we saw a store manager in a strip mall parking lot fall to the ground as robbers drove away, firing at him. Although my mother was not at all happy about the risk, dad drove after the robbers, calling out license plate numbers to mom as one of my brothers and I became flanking guards in the back seat, ready to wave off any other vehicles that might have interfered with our pursuit.

My father's August 15, 1967 San Diego Kiwanis Club award for "MORALE FIBER" currently stands watch over his ashes, a fitting memorial to a man who prided himself for being an un-hyphenated American. I only wish that I still had the newspaper clipping of the award ceremony.

Althoough I was the one son who did not play high school football at Mount Miguel, he told me before he died that he was very proud that I had served in the President's escort battalion... even if it was mostly for that Democrat, Jimmy Carter.

My father was somewhat disappointed when I was offered an Order of the Arrow invitation as the senior patrol leader in Lemon Grove's Troop 376 (probably a pretty rare thing back then for a minority in the Grossmont scouting council) but turned it down before leaving Scouting behind. I was much more interested in being a cadet at Mount Miguel's JROTC battalion, especially as I thought it would give me an edge if I were drafted for Vietnam. I had been greatly impressed when the Senior Army Instructor spoke at the Eagle Scout ceremony for an older friend in the troop.

This same World War II veteran became a personal mentor when I pushed to become the battalion logistics staff officer. He was the one who taught me the horse-trading benefits of requesting 100 items instead of 10 on a requisition form to higher headquarters, so that we had a surplus of stuff for swapping with other local units. He was so good at what he did that we became probably the only JROTC unit in the country with a admiral's yacht in our inventory while I was in my first year as battalion S-4.

I rather miss dodging ships in the harbor channel between North Island and Point Loma...

The war in Vietnam ended while I was still in high school, but my cadet performance there was what led me to be selected for the DC escort battalion posting even before I had graduated at 17. Another, higher-ranking cadet that year was selected as a '76 Olympic alternate in wrestling, and was highly sought after for West Point and the Air Force Academy. Still another was our first female cadet lieutenant colonel. Including the cadet battalion commander, there were four of us colonels by the time we walked for graduation that year.

Between the scouting and the military leadership classes in ROTC, I had developed a pretty much color-blind view of the world. After all, I had heard Dr. King's Washington speech on having a dream, and it made perfect sense to me, living through that age of civil rights reform and women's liberation.

Seeing Washington DC at 17 was my first experience with a municipality that really had a Black section of town. I seem to remember our first Black Secretary of the Army, Clifford Alexander, shooting hoops in his off hours at the Fort Myer gym. This was before the arrival of the Metro and the modernization of Arlington, Virginia. On my off hours, I would just walk through the surrounding neighborhoods in the evenings, enjoying the still-rural flavor of certain places within the Arlington city limits before calling long distance to a certain young lady in Lemon Grove by payphone...

While at Fort Myer, I met and spoke with the first female cadets admitted to West Point who happened to be passing through the post exchange. I was also there when the entire US Army Drill Team threatened to resign en masse if the First Lady got her wish of seeing women assigned to my infantry unit as members of the Honor Guard (I think all changed their minds when the most-likely alternative hardship posting in South Korea was offered to them).

Years later, I was involved in the student government at San Diego City College. After being elected treasurer the first time, it was my personal goal to re-write the student government constitution, so that no student would have to pay a fee to vote and that all students on campus were represented. Since no good deed goes unpunished, I was told to run for president by the Dean of Student Affairs ("It's your constitution... You implement it!")

As a students' president, I made it my job to visit every club on campus. I saw myself as representing the entire student body, regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin, or previous lethal encounters with the San Diego Police Department, whether they voted for me or not. Yes, not even Sagon Penn was beyond representation by his student government.

There may be a local weather personality who just might remember the meetings I had with the Black Student Union at City College, helping them to re-write their bylaws in the late 80s. Somewhere in the Voice & Viewpoint back then, there is a picture of the BSU slate that was just elected as the City College student government; it doesn't take a rocket scientist to pick me out of the crowd in that photo as their appointed treasurer. This was around the same time I was kicked out of City College MEChA meetings for being a "revisionist", having made several suggestions for a new "City College Plan" to emphasize the goal of obtaining US citizenship for resident aliens of Mexican descent all across America.

Sometimes we of Mexican descent are the best at keeping ourselves down.

I got hit on after giving my spiel at a Gay Student Union meeting on participating in community college governance as students attending college and district committees. In a way, this was flattering, but the idea of having sex with a man is something that never had any mental traction in my mind.

When my bid for the California Community Colleges Board of Governors student seat didn't pan out, I was selected as the only community college student in the country to receive a 1990 Minority Leaders Fellowship, leading to my second extended visit to DC.

I arrived just in time to see all of the "It's a Black Thing" teeshirts regarding the popular support of DC Mayor Marion Barry, charged with crack cocaine violations and later found guilty but returned to office after my fellowship was over. Given the recent ethnicity-driven issue-avoiding controversy in the 4th District surrounding the current outgoing president of the Southeastern Economic Development Corporation, I just thought it deserved mention.

While doing a concurrent internship with the Resolution Trust Corporation about one block east of the Old Executive Office Building, we were stunned in the office one day by the news of Iraq invading Kuwait.

I am not a hyphenated-American.

I remember one symptom of Americans being separated by race from my Old Guard tour.

I probably took part in roughly 1000 burials in the three years I was with D Company, 1st Battalion, 3d US Infantry Regiment. In that time, I helped to render final honors to many American servicemembers who had been in uniform during World War II.

Because the vast majority of American veterans of that war who were of African descent did not serve in combat but rather in some rear-area activity, these Black veterans did not have the medals and decorations required for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Instead, they were buried at Maryland National, or Lincoln National... someplace or any place other than ANC.

Fortunately, this sort of social injustice after death will not be repeated in the future.

I believe in the coming together of Americans for recognizing problems and reaching solutions. I cannot think of a single social problem in America today that cannot be expressed as a situation of some Americans being treated as not like the rest of Americans. Personal choices about conduct and expressions of love for one's ethnicity are one thing, but those choices and expressions are generally not any legitimate reason to exclude or limit any group of Americans from the political participation in setting or implementing public policy... as long as one's group is not advocating the violent overthrow of the government.

This coming together of Americans in common purpose may not be happening in reality, but it is an ideal that we can strive for.

For all of our faults and failures, I still have one thought on my mind today, as on all days:

God bless the US.