The home team was up 2-0 against the Atlanta Braves when Jimmy Weldon came up to bat on DodgerVision between the 2nd and 3rd inning last Tuesday, and 50,000 fans rose from their seats to give him a standing ovation.
From his wheelchair on the clubhouse level, Jimmy smiled and waved to the cheering crowd as Justin Turner, Albert Pujols, Freddie Freeman, and players from both dugouts stood and joined in the applause.
“Thank you,” the 96-year-old World War II veteran said. “Thank you.”
It’s a class gesture the Dodgers have been doing, recognizing a veteran at home games. It’s becoming as popular with many fans as the seventh inning stretch, only instead of singing we get to cheer. And, who doesn’t like to cheer at a ball game?
The Dodgers recognize the vets in prime time when all the seats are filled, not during pregame activities when half the fans are still in the parking lot. It’s an important distinction.
This isn’t lip service, just a nice gesture by the home team. This is for everyone at the game to see and hear — a “put down your beer and hot dog, and listen up” moment. There’s someone special at the game today you should meet.
Last Tuesday, it was the Valley’s own Jimmy Weldon — the “flag man.”
The horror the young combat engineer felt when his squad helped liberate the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp in 1945 has never left him. All those beaten, starving men to weak to stand, reaching up to him with tears of gratitude in their eyes, just wanting to touch his hand and say thank you. You don’t forget that.
How can this happen, Jimmy thought? Even now, he still can’t believe it. It made him realize the only way to combat evil was with strength and love, he said. But how do you turn that into action when you get home? How do you get people to listen?
Jimmy became a successful motivational speaker, but still something was missing from his words. He could talk about the need for strength and love, but without a symbol, something everyone would recognize, it was just words he was spouting.
He finally found the right words in a speech a Rotarian had written in 1968, giving a powerful voice to the American flag. “They moved me to near tears,” Jimmy says. “I thought imagine what a motivational speaker could do with those words.”
He began to visits schools, corporate board rooms, civic groups and service clubs throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, standing in the back of the room or auditorium as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” began to play softly, and walking slowly to the front never taking his eyes off the flag.
“I am the flag of the United States of America,” he begins in a deep, powerful voice that sounds like its been shot out of a cannon. “I rode with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys at the Battle of Fort Bennington, and blazed the trail with Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone.
“I galloped up the slope of San Juan Hill with Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, and was carried through the Halls of Montezuma to the shore of Tripoli by the United States Marine Corps.
“History will never write my obituary for I am the stars and stripes forever. I am Old Glory. I am your flag. I am you!”
There’s more, much more, and it’s all very moving. Maybe the Dodgers will play it someday between innings next season. I think the fans would give up a little mariachi and rap music for another standing ovation.
Two of the greatest things you can say are “thank you” and “I love you,” Jimmy would always remind me every time our paths crossed over the years.
Last Tuesday, thanks to the Dodgers, veteran Jimmy Weldon got all that love and thanks he’s been handing out his entire life thrown right back at him when he stepped to the plate on DodgerVision in prime time, and knocked all those cheers right out of the park.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.
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