PFC Dick Kerin, B Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 21 years old, arrived in the second wave of U.S. infantry, on a strip of land barely 300 yards wide. Mount Suribachi loomed over his shoulders like death itself.

        “Bullets flying, artillery, mortars, airplanes strafing targets. The sound was like nothing I've ever heard,” he said.

        It was Feb. 19, 1945, and the American military was closing in on saving the world. Four days later, Mr. Kerin was a mile away from Suribachi, when a cheer came up he'll never forget. B Company was entrenched near a Japanese airstrip when “we heard this tremendous roar. We saw that flag go up on Suribachi. What an incentive to get the job done.”

        Seventeen days after that, Mr. Kerin took a bullet through his left arm that exited through his back. He'd been evacuating a wounded buddy from the shell crater they'd occupied. They'd been going from cave to pillbox, clearing out the enemy. It was the second time Mr. Kerin had been shot.

        The first came at Bougainville, two years earlier. Mr. Kerin was running point when the Marines landed, when he was shot in the back by a sniper. Nineteen years old, six months removed from his first term as a college student. A football player who wanted to coach.

        He enlisted in December 1942. Now, 11 months later, he was lying on his back on a muddy beach, waiting to be evacuated. He recalls now the rain that fell harder than he has ever seen.

        They evacuated him to a hospital. Mr. Kerin got his first Purple Heart. He got another at Iwo Jima. Mr. Kerin was training in Hawaii for the invasion of Japan when the bombs exploded in August 1945.

        Dick Kerin went home to Mount Vernon, Ohio, then. He came to Cincinnati, where he taught history and government, coached football, baseball and wrestling. He raised four sons.

        Mr. Kerin's 76 now, retired. But he's still asked to speak at schools. Especially this time of year; Veteran's Day is Saturday.On Friday, he'll go to a middle school in Fairfield, where he will raise the flag and say a few things.

        “This is a fantastic country. The freedoms we have . . . you just don't understand,” he will say. “It's something a hell of a lot of people in the world don't have.”

        This column wasn't going to be about Dick Kerin. Only now, it is. It is about Dick Kerin, and your responsibility to him on Tuesday.

        Vote.

        Go to the school or church. Pull the lever. Voting is an expression of optimism. It is a gesture of faith. It is giving thanks to Dick Kerin, and to those like him.

        We're lucky that voting in a free election is a choice. But voting should not be something you do if you feel like it. If you are too jaded or cynical or lazy to do it for yourself, then do it for Dick Kerin. He took two bullets for your right.

        “I always tried to get across to my students what they owe for living in this country,” Mr. Kerin says. “Freedom just didn't happen. A lot of people died for this.”

        He goes to World War II reunions still. The ranks thin by the hour. He sees men he knew 55 years ago. A few have been in wheelchairs since Iwo Jima. They're “active, concerned citizens,” Mr. Kerin says.

        Tuesday, they will enter the booth and draw the curtain behind them. The least you can do is the same.

        Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; fax: 768-8330.

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