Patriotism, athletics go hand in hand.(Brief Article)

A brilliant day, a Friday in the fall, the sun warm on our backs, we walked to the south portico of the United States Capitol. From that high place we saw in the middle distance the Washington Monument, and we saw, at the far end, the Lincoln Memorial. When we saw all that before us on a beautiful day in a fall of sadness, my friend Verenda said, "Wow."

Because we live in Washington, we have seen these places a thousand times. But Verenda had it right. Wow. To see these places now, to see them after September 11, is to see them anew. So we walked from the Capitol, and we walked for hours.

We saw the bronze of a Civil War general on horseback, soldiers hanging onto an artillery caisson clattering to his side. We saw our faces in mirrored black granite that moans of Vietnam dead. We stood in a marble temple and read on a wall a president's words: "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here ..."

We stopped in a museum to see the Star-Spangled Banner. By the dawn's early light of September 14, 1814, the massive flag yet waved over Baltimore's Fort McHenry. Americans had outlasted a British siege that (a survivor said) "threw at least 1,800 shells among us. We were like pigeons tied by the legs to be shot at." The lawyer Francis Scott Key saw that flag and in a poem called his nation "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

We saw three helicopters descend to the White House, always three to confuse an enemy, the three flying under the thunderous cover of fighter jets. We saw flowers left on the Mall by some people from Mongolia who have embraced America. We saw a president's words cut into purple stone: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

The night before our walk, Lisa Beamer came to the Capitol. Her husband had risen against fear. When hijackers thought to fly to Washington--to destroy the White House? the Capitol?--Todd Beamer did the kind of brave, selfless thing that is the beating heart of a nation made and sustained by brave, selfless people.

Passengers knew planes had crashed into buildings. Beamer and three other men decided to act. Ten years ago, he had been a basketball guard and baseball shortstop/centerfielder at Wheaton College in Illinois. "Good athlete with good speed, batted second for us, led off sometimes ... a very solid leader ... deeply religious ... very unselfish," said his old baseball coach, Ron Frank. "What he did is in total keeping with the man he was."