Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Dear Colin Kaepernick, I happened to be watching the beginning of your televised football game last night while waiting at the Newport News/Williamsburg Airport for my husband to return from Iraq. It wasn’t a sightseeing tour. He had been gone for almost three months. The return from Iraq is a comedy of errors with trains, planes, and Humvees that takes over three days for him to reach U.S. soil. In his tiredness, my husband had sent me his departure time instead of his arrival time, which is how I ended up watching your team as I sat alone in the airport lobby.

I have to be honest; I cried. I watched as you and some of your team members chose not to stand during the national anthem. You were positioned behind members from all branches of the armed forces who held a large U.S. flag across the field. The irony was too much for me.

I am the product of over 50 years of military service, not as a service member but as a daughter and wife. My father retired as a SGM after 30 years in the Army. He served in Korea and Vietnam multiple times. I have been married for over 25 years to a retired U.S. Army CW5. My husband served over 25 years as an Army attack helicopter pilot. He is a combat veteran; the list of deployments is too long to enumerate. Neither my father nor my husband has always agreed with the choices of the commander-in-chief, but they never took that out on the flag or the anthem of our country.

You see, that flag and that song represent more than the injustices you protest against. They represent all that is good about who we are as a people. Those men and women standing in front of you last night pledged an oath to protect and serve, and I promise you it wasn’t for the money. As a military kid overseas, the national anthem was played before every movie at the movie theater. We had to stand before watching a movie. I miss that. I am grateful that we still keep that tradition at sporting events. It is so important to be reminded that everything has a cost. Forgive the cliché, but freedom isn’t free.  

So, yes—the irony brought tears to my eyes. As the anthem ended and your teammates offered you slaps of support and you granted numerous selfies to your adorning fans, I cried. As you relished in the limelight, the servicemen and women quietly, unnoticed, left the scene. Did you know that you will earn more income from one football game than they will make in a lifetime? Even with hazardous duty pay, the income of a military member does not come close to yours.

I honestly don’t begrudge you your earnings. They are yours; you earned them. But, that is my point. You live in a country where you can earn that kind of income, where you can go to school and play sports, where you can work out and play hard, where you can make a living at doing what you love.

My husband made a similar choice and has been blessed to spend his career serving the country he loves alongside some amazing men and women he respects immensely. He has also been frustrated with many injustices that still exist in our country, and don’t for one minute think that he does not enter that dialogue. He just would never do it while disrespecting a symbol of the country he loves; neither would I.

As you received all your congratulations and as the U.S. Armed Forces members and the U.S. flag exited the field and as I waited for my husband to return from Iraq, the irony again overwhelmed me.

Teresa D. Rinderer

Gloucester, Va.