On Memorial Day, Remembering One Who Has Fallen

There’s a purpose to this holiday

I didn’t grow up knowing a lot about the military. My dad served in the Air Force in the mid to late 1950s. He didn’t talk about it much. I regret now I didn’t question him about it more.

It’s a bit weird. I have interviewed other veterans for the Library of Congress’s Veteran’s History Project. It collects histories of living veterans. But I never interviewed my dad. I always meant to do it. There’s a lesson there.

But Dad’s not why we celebrate Memorial Day. He came out of the military and lived a full life until he was 84.

Memorial Day is when we honor those who died when serving. It’s not Veteran’s Day when we honor all veterans. When I realized so many people screwed this up, it started driving me a bit nuts.

One Memorial Day I overheard a veteran speak to someone who had gone up and thanked him, “Today’s not our day, you know. It’s reserved for those soldiers who died for their country. Let’s focus on them and their loved ones today.”

It warmed my heart.

It was shortly after this that I began to feel that perhaps I too often got confused about our different military holidays and didn’t celebrate any well. I started making it a practice to pick out a soldier to honor each Memorial Day. I find out all that I can about them and thank God for them and their family. Of course, their family may remember them today, but someone outside of their family should actively remember they existed.

My process isn’t sophisticated. I try to keep it as random as possible. My qualifications change every year. That’s easy with Google. I have chosen from different wars, women, people from my state, someone with my last name, someone who served in the Air Force like my Dad, or in the Navy as one of my best friends did. These are some of the examples of randomness.

This year I decided to pick someone from New York since they have been struck hard by the coronavirus, and the state has been on my mind. That was my only criteria. I went to a site for soldiers from New York who had died in service and picked one. I like the letter ”Z,” so chose soldier Captain Christopher “Tripp” Zanetis. I knew nothing else about him when I began.

Captain Zanetis, of Long Island, died at the age of 37 during Operation Inherent Resolve. He was assigned to the 106th Rescue Wing. The helicopter he was in crashed in western Iraq on March 15, 2018.

Captain Zanetis was a member of the New York City Fire Department and had just begun work as an associate with the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in New York City.

Captain Zanetis grew up in Carmel, Indiana. He graduated cum laude in politics from New York University, where he was a leader of the Student Senate and was the student body president. He was also a diver on the swimming team, and a singer.

He lived three blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He rushed to Ground Zero and volunteered until midnight. This was the catalyst for his career with the fire department, where he rose to Fire Marshal and was recognized for bravery.

He joined the Air Force National Guard in 2008, where he trained to fly the Air Force combat search and rescue helicopter, the HH-60G PaveHawk. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012. Before his last deployment, he was promoted to Instructor Pilot.

While still active duty in the National Guard, Zanetis enrolled in law school at Stanford, where he graduated with pro bono distinction in 2017. Pro bono distinction is awarded to students who serve the highest number of volunteer hours when in law school.

Zanetis was gay and came out to his family at 15. He joined the military during the “Don’t ask, don’t tell years” and served openly as gay after its repeal in 2011.

He was survived by his family, his boyfriend Jean Pouget-Abadie, and his adored Malinois, Nyx.

That’s a bit about the life of a soldier I remember this year, simply picked because he was from New York, and his last name began with “Z.”

Every body has a story. Captain Christopher “Tripp” Zanetis lived much in his life. He gave much to our world. It sounds to me as though our world lost quite a man when we lost him.

On this Memorial Day, join me in honoring his memory. A stranger who I now know existed. A soldier who died when serving. Our reason for Memorial Day.

May we never forget that these were actual people with real lives, cut short before they could do even greater things. They are more than a statistic.

“Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt