It seems like you see a lot of public officials being sworn in to various high-level offices on TV these days. Most of it occurs in Washington, D.C.: Presidents, congresspeople, cabinet members, court witnesses, others swearing to do this and that to uphold the Constitution or seek justice.
It always gives me pause when I view a swearing in or other vows being recited because I missed out on much of that in life. All of those important moments with the one hand raised, the other on a Bible (sometimes), or reciting traditional vows standing before a clergyman at a wedding to sanctify a marriage.
Let me explain, largely in chronological order. I don’t recall if I was sworn into the Boy Scouts, pledging on my honor to do my best to do my duty to God and my country and so on and so forth. I might have made it to that one, but nothing since.
When I reached military draft age, after passing the Army physical with flying colors in spite of being stone deaf in one ear but not having bone spurs, I scurried down to the old Duluth National Guard Armory, where Bob Dylan once attended a concert, and joined the Minnesota Army National Guard in order to avoid being drafted and having to serve two years of active duty.
After they signed me and several other draft-dodgers up, they apparently assembled them all for the big swearing in. I don’t know where I was but when it came time to raise right hands (no Bibles though) to solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and so on and so forth, I must have been in the can (a.k.a. latrine in Army parlance) or somewhere else in the Armory.
So I missed being sworn in to military service but they took me anyway. About the time my service obligation ended, some six years later, I got married. The wedding vows are the most important a person can take, but I missed them too. At my wedding!
What? How could that be? Let me start at the beginning. I was raised in the then Swedish branch of the Lutheran Church (there were several ethnically oriented Lutheran branches in those days, even Norwegian and German, right here in Duluth). But by the time I came along, services were in English, thank heaven. (Where else?)
As a child I had witnessed the wedding vows being taken more than most kids did because my mother was the organist of our church and sometimes I had to attend weddings with her.
I heard them often. Preacher: “Do you (groom’s name) take (bride’s name) as your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death you do part?”
Groom: “I do…yup I do, by yumpin by yimminy I do.” (As I said, this was the Swedish branch of the Lutheran church.)
However, I wasn’t married in the Swedish Lutheran church. The wedding was in a Greek Orthodox Church, the faith of my bride.
This all took place more than 50 years ago, when the Greek service contained mostly the Greek language, which was Greek to me. But in rehearsal, we asked the priest if he would include the traditional wedding vows in English, and he agreed.
So we had the lengthy service, which shortly before had been described in news coverage of the wedding of Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, but no promised English vows. When it was over we asked the priest what happened to the traditional vows. “I forgot,” he said reverently.
But we nevertheless felt very married, and still are these nearly 57 years later with two kids and six grandkids to show for it,
Of course, I’m at an age now where the traditional rites “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” loom pretty large. I wouldn’t mind missing them, too.
Come to think of it, I will.
Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.
