The elderly
parking lot attendant wasn't in a good mood!
Neither was Sam
Bierstock. It was around 1 am, and Bierstock, a Delray Beach, FL, eye
doctor, business consultant, corporate speaker and musician, was bone tired
after appearing at an event.
He pulled up in
his car, and the parking attendant began to speak. "I took two bullets
for this country and look what I'm doing," he said
bitterly.
At first,
Bierstock didn't know what to say to the World War II veteran. But he
rolled down his window and told the man, "Really, from the bottom of my heart,
I want to thank you." Then the old soldier began to cry. "That
really got to me," Bierstock says. Cut to today. Bierstock,
58, and John Melnick, 54, of Pompano Beach - a member of Bierstock's band,
"Dr. Sam and the Managed Care Band" - have written a song inspired by that old
soldier in the airport parking lot. The mournful "Before You Go" does
more than salute those who fought in WW II. It encourages people to go
out of their way to thank the aging warriors before they die. "If we had
lost that particular war, our whole way of life would have been shot," says
Bierstock, who plays harmonica. "The WW II soldiers are now dying at the
rate of about 2,000 every day. I thought we needed to thank them."
The song is striking a chord.
Within four days
of Bierstock placing it on the Web the song and accompanying photo essay have
bounced around nine countries, producing tears and heartfelt thanks from
veterans, their sons and daughters and grandchildren. "It made me cry,"
wrote one veteran's son. Another sent an e-mail saying that only after
his father consumed several glasses of wine would he discuss "the unspeakable
horrors" he and other soldiers had witnessed in places such as Anzio, Iwo
Jima, Bataan and Omaha Beach. "I can never thank them enough," the son
wrote. "Thank you for thinking about them."
Bierstock and
Melnick thought about shipping it off to a professional singer, maybe a Lee
Greenwood type, but because time was running out for so many veterans, they
decided it was best to release it quickly, for free, on the Web. They've
sent the song to Sen. John McCain and others in Washington. Already they
have been invited to perform it in Houston for a Veterans Day tribute - this
after just a few days on the Web. They hope every veteran in America
gets a chance to hear it.
Please turn up your sound, then click on
the site below!