Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
“Through the aspect of life shown by humility, anything can be learned and done that one is called to.”
Sgt. Horace Lee said this that he had learned from his father Horatio to all of his children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and anyone humble enough to listen … and his youngest grandchild also was raised by him as his child and remained humble … so Col. Henry Fitzhugh Lee humbly listened to everyone everywhere.
To his enemies, the curse of the colonel's humility was heavy. He heard them even when they did not want to be heard … he counted their words and watched how they moved and asked on high to understand those things he could not so read … so in every field, he dominated them. He was, on the battlefield and in court and in police work, still the undefeated Lee. No surrender, no retreat, no pride about it; he held his grandfather's wisdom close to his heart and kept moving.
Col. Lee had taken his losses in the area of his love … a first wife and child, countless peers, superiors, and junior officers. Less so than most however: he knew his fellow soldiers as well as he knew their enemies, and as commander was successful because he knew what his team could do in comparison to who they had to do it to, and how. Those who had served with him were almost ready to bow down and worship him because they sensed his deep knowledge of them and care based on that – never for ego or desperation were they ever going into a no-win situation, and he was as committed to getting them home as he was to getting himself – maybe a little more.
“Well, I might kiss the ground Lee walks on, except I'd never get up – the colonel does not play that,” one of his officers had said. “That's the one thing that will get you sent straight to Hell for idolatry!”
Moving to the police force in Big Loft, VA had just been more of the same in the end … he had completely won over the men he led as captain, and together they had cleaned out the department, the city, and the county with the help of his cousin and best adjutant Major Ironwood Hamilton, serving as police captain over in Tinyville. Crime rates in Lofton County, VA were way down from 2019, and now that the two had convinced their Judge Advocate General mentor, Major J.P.P Dubois, to retire from Interpol to there, crime just could not find a way to get back up even in the highest places it had lodged.
And in that new work a courageous and beautiful woman had become known to the colonel's heart, and he had taken a second chance on love with Magdalena Milano Thornton … and found it good … and so she had been Maggie M.T. Lee in the end, and he certainly listened to her.
“My problem is, I'm going to miss my little Ludlow cousins so much when we are done here … I just don't know what Harry and I are going to do as empty nesters so soon in our marriage … .”
That the colonel had not considered. Eight weeks was indeed enough time to settle into some behavioral patterns, and Maggie, like him, had lost a child. He was a hardened soldier; she was a tender-hearted woman who had never weathered nor could think of weathering the kinds of moving on that he had done since the age of 18.
So: this could be a problem. The colonel of course was of the mind that they would get through it, but he felt it had been brought to his attention because something was going to happen that would allow him to comfort the heart of his wife … and his own heart as well … and by this time, their Ludlow cousins were deeply attached to them as well.
That evening, the colonel felt led to take a walk around the Veteran's Lodge that evening, but he only got a far as the next cul-de-sac where a terrible problem was occurring.
“I told y'all when we were buying these homes and adding them to the Lodge that the next one down is on solid ground but all the rest were on sand and with all those water main breaks these sinkholes were going to be coming! I told y'all to move this thing to the empty place on that next lot on bedrock, but no!”
The house was not gone yet, but even in the evening light one could see its end was near – days, not weeks, unless it was moved expeditiously.
“Well, I don't care what you do with it – the Lodge will have to provide alternative housing for us,” the present renter was saying. “I have never felt so helpless and my family so frightened in our entire lives – I know we are going to Heaven and we did not need to feel like we were sliding directly into Hell.”
Col. Lee took that moment to introduce himself as a trustee for the Lofton Trust that administered the Veteran's Lodge, and got busy – whole googobs of people watched this master commander and communicator pull the resources together that night to save the home and get it moved to that empty lot on the cul-de-sac next door the next day, and the necessary repairs made – and just in time, because it rained heavily that next night and the predicted sinkhole would have swallowed that house.
Next problem: even though it had been repaired, the story of the “Hell Slide” had run too far – no one was thinking about renting it except for the man who had overseen its move and its repairs. Thus, Col. and Mrs. Lee completed becoming neighbors to the Trents and Ludlows in days, not weeks, and the Lodge never missed a bit of rent.
“Through the aspect of life shown by humility, anything can be learned and done that one is called to” … and if one humbly listened to the call, everything around it became clear.
