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You talk in your book about one of your rougher times together. After you cooked a very special meal, he didn't show up. By calling Erica's house, you found out he was having dinner there instead.

With John leaving that summer I just went out of my mind. I called the father up and said that I hoped that while John was over there that nothing was going on. I didn't want John getting his daughter pregnant.

This is really the first conversation you've had with this guy, right?

Exactly. That evening, my wife, Genie, said to me, "You called Trip and told him you thought John might get Erica pregnant? Are you out of your mind? How can you insult him that way? John will never speak to you again."

"Of course he will," I said.

"The only reason you're so angry is because he missed your rosemary chicken," Genie said and smiled.

"Maybe that I feel lonely," I said.

But part of the reason you felt this way was because of your own background at this age.

When I would talk to him as a teenager, what I really had to tell him was "Don't do what I did." When I was 17, and my wife was 18, I got her pregnant with who turned out to be our beautiful daughter, Jessica.

And this happened at L'Abri, right?

Yeah, right in the middle of a big Christian ministry there. God bless my parents, they neither judged me, censored me, tossed me out, or made me embarrassed. They just were very loving and took Genie in. We got married and everything had a happy ending, although there were a lot of big struggles because we were just kids having kids.

In the book I talk all about that in the context of wishing that I had my Dad back. He died in 1984. I want to say, "Hey Dad, I guess this is payback time. You know, I got Genie pregnant, and John has joined the Marine Corps without my permission." The funny thing is John has been an absolute model citizen. I was getting somebody pregnant, and he was going off to defend his country. Which kid would you rather be raising? So I look back on my own life and realize this guy has actually done the right thing, whereas I was just giving my parents nightmares.

When I went down to Parris Island and saw him graduate, it was honestly the proudest moment of my life. I felt very small and kind of alien to all the selflessness around me. I really felt that I was unworthy to be standing so casually on the ground that these guys had trained on and into which millions of gallons of sweat had soaked.

So you found your views about the military changing?

I really started look at my own connection to my country differently. I feel completely different about it. I'm connected through John. I can look the men and women in the eye who defend us, because my son's one of them. It's a kind of reconnecting with the national fabric of our nation in a way that I'd never experienced. And now I look back and I say, "Man, you know, you were an isolated, snobbish kind of a guy, weren't you?"

Now you see the country very differently than did your father, who was pessimistic about Western culture.

I actually feel that America is an amazing country. There's a lot going on in this country that I have a terrible sense of disapproval of, whether it's abortion on demand or a lot of things like that. But on the other hand, through having John in the Marine Corps and kind of hooking into my own American roots of grandparents and great-grandparents who served on John's side, you know, the question is, What's the alternative? Who would you rather have as the great power in the world right now? France? China? Saudi Arabia?

I guess having John out there defending us while we sleep really has made me much more kind of level-headed in looking at what the alternatives are. My sense is that, warts and all, the world is fortunate that we are the ones wielding this terrific power right now.

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April (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47