Obamas Sacred Duty: Visiting the Wounded at Walter Reed
Obama’s Sacred Duty: Visiting the Wounded at Walter Reed
By GARDINER HARRIS
NOV. 29, 2016
Lt. Cmdr. John Terry doing lunges with President Obama at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Commander Terry, who provided the image, said, “I will remember that day until I die.”
BETHESDA, Md. — President Obama stood outside the room, rubbed sanitizer on his hands, set his face into a smile and knocked on the door.
No one answered. He looked at the hospital floor, polished to a sheen, and knocked again. Still no answer. So Mr. Obama turned the knob and gently pushed his way inside.
“Hello? Jeremy, what’s going on?” Maj. Jeremy Haynes remembers the president saying as he came into his room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center two years ago.
It was the first of several visits the president paid Major Haynes, an Army officer who was told he would never walk, feel below his waist or have children again after his spine was hit by a Taliban bullet in Afghanistan. The visits, Major Haynes said, “were truly inspiring to me” and gave him hope for the life ahead of him.
On Tuesday, for his 23rd and probably last time as president, Mr. Obama traveled to the military hospital to spend an afternoon with the wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of the weather, he arrived in a motorcade, not his usual helicopter, but otherwise, his visit unfolded much as Major Haynes and hospital officials describe the ones he has paid before.
With a minimum of ceremony, the president’s motorcade pulled up to a side entrance, where a military aide met him with the latest update on the conditions of those he was about to see. He then climbed four flights of stairs to 4 West and 4 Center, known as the soldiers ward. After greeting the doctors and nurses on duty, he began his rounds, eventually meeting 13 soldiers and awarding 12 Purple Hearts.
For Mr. Obama, who has served as a wartime commander longer than any of his predecessors, meeting with the wounded and their families is among the most sacred duties of his presidency. He rarely talks about his trips to Walter Reed, but his aides say they have affected him deeply.
David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political aide, said the president often returned from Walter Reed, first when it was in Washington and later after it had merged with Bethesda Naval Hospital, in a somber mood. After one trip, he recalled, Mr. Obama described a young woman attending to her newlywed husband, whose body was shattered and head terribly wounded.
“‘You want to be upbeat and encouraging,’ I remember him saying,” Mr. Axelrod said. “‘But they’re just kids starting out, and I looked at his wife’s face, and you could see her struggling with what this would mean for the rest of their lives. It’s really hard.’”
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such as this after January 20, 1917. And then I see a friend's brother's post on FB: There hasn't been any class in the White House for 8 years.
How can people be so cruel and mean, so blind to courage and goodness? I am heartbroken, not only at the prospect of losing this great President, but the thought of who will follow him. 
