DeKalb County Native and Retired Navy Chaplain Larry Cripps will be the guest speaker at DeKalb County’s Memorial Day Observance Monday.
Cripps said he will be talking about his book, “The Hope of War.” It chronicles his life growing up in Middle Tennessee against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the cultural revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s. Cripps said that during his time in the military, he realized the wildest war zones were the hearts and minds of service members that he counseled and cared for.
“When you lose friends and the government makes political decisions again that undermine the years that we have spent and the sacrifice that we made, and especially when it touches you, we struggle with that, okay, to find some purpose in all of that,” Cripps said.
Cripps said as he saw suicide rates among veterans continue to climb, he knew he couldn’t sit on the sidelines and not help. Cripps said he wrote the book about his experiences to give fellow veterans hope in understanding a purpose for their sacrifice and adjusting to everyday life.
“It’s a chance to get the message out,” Cripps said. “Hopefully, you are able to connect with people and reach people who are struggling, who need to hear the message of what it means to have abiding faith, enduring hope, what that looks like, and love in the face of adversity and how that can bring the stability to your life that a lot of the young veterans, and service members, and first responders, and their families are looking for.”
Cripps said in 1969, at the age of 19, he received his military draft notice. Cripps said just a couple of months after being drafted, he was boots on the ground in Vietnam.
“Before my 21st birthday, I was a combat veteran,” Cripps said. “The average age during the Second World War of those who served was 26, and in Vietnam it was 19. Quite the disparity in age, you know, can make a lot of difference when you are exposed to that much trauma, but we did very well to be so young. We entered the service probably with a naive perspective on what war was like, but again, we grew up in a hurry out of necessity.”
Cripps said he was thankful for the people around him who helped him adjust back to everyday life after the Vietnam War. Cripps said many service members at that time did not have the same luck.
“You know, Post Operation Stress and things like that, since we had never been diagnosed since then, but at that time we didn’t know anything about that,” Cripps said. “So there was not any preparation for us to make that transition from what we had been doing in Vietnam to the second routine of everyday life, you can see it was a major adjustment.”
Cripps said he released the book last year. Cripps said that the money he gets from selling the book, he donates to the Wounded Warrior Project and the Somebody Else Foundation. Cripps said so far, he has raised over $6,000.
The DeKalb County Memorial Day Observance will take place on Monday, May 26, at 9:30am located at the DeKalb County Complex in Smithville.
