My son Dustin is "just" a 17 year old kid. He joined the Army National Guard this summer so he could begin serving his country early. Despite all the reasons kids have these days to be disillusioned with our country, economy and our government, Dustin still loves America.  (He always has.  This is a picture of Dustin at age 4 prepared with nerf gun to be an "Army Man" as he would call himself.)

Dustin plays football for the Putnam City North Panthers. He is starting left tackle. One of his dreams was to be elected as a captain of the team his senior year. The saturday these elections were held was a Guard drill weekend and he had to miss that practice. He may not have been elected even if he'd been there, but he was definitely not elected to the captain leadership role. He was disappointed but just considered it a small sacrifice to make for service to his country.

Our football coach is Bob Wilson, who just four years ago coached Sam Bradford during his high school football career. Coach Wilson is in the business of making boys into men, specifically men of integrity. I'm so happy that Dustin has stepped up and that Coach Wilson has allowed Dustin to take a leadership role on the team even without the "official" captain's title.

Attached is a photo of Dustin proudly escorting our country's flag onto the football field last Friday night. It was September 11, 2009.

Here is Dustin's Twitter post about that: http://twitter.com/DustinDecker/status/4021350523

The photo was taken by Richard T. Clifton. (http://rtcdigitalimages.com/) and is posted on Richard's Facebook page here in full color.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=644665&id=1468927857&ref=nf

Richard T. Clifton (http://rtcdigitalimages.com/) took this photo.  Here's a link to the color photo on his facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=644666&id=1468927857&ref=nf#/photo.php?pid=644665&id=1468927857&ref=nf

Jenni Carlson wrote a story about Dustin that ran in the Sports section of the Oklahoman on October 9, 2009.  Here's the link: http://newsok.com/friday-night-lights-when-duty-calls-pc-norths-dustin-decker-ready-to-serve/article/3407449