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Letter 2 TO LT. BOB KALSUBob, your name is on The Wall every day, day in and day out, while hundreds of people visit the Mecca-Like shrine to our Viet Nam dead. I've always wondered how many OU Sooners have made the pilgrimage to THE WALL, just to see your name. You, plus 987 Oklahomans, can be found on THE WALL! The neat thing about being a freshman at The University of Oklahoma in 1963, is that was the last year that Bud Wilkinson coached. Bud was a class act. I cannot imagine him in the locker-room trying to keep the team's spirit up by using foul language. Wilkinson was all business and after he retired, he went on to Washington DC to be named the president's "hit man" on physical fitness.
Remember Joe Don Looney? He was let go because he couldn't bridle his mouth, tongue, or body. Looney could have been one of the greatest football players of all time. He died in a motorcycle accident.
I can remember watching The Coach walking up and down the side lines, with a tie, never yelling, calm, cool and collected. I know that Coach Wilkinson would turn around calmly and talk to his players. I remember even attending some of the spring practices or the alumni game, and The Coach was all business. Wilkinson lived his Christianity. Right now I am watching OU basketball play Alabama.
Bob, we have a president whose favorite word is the "F" word as his favorite word. You and I can imagine just how his twin girls talk. It's sad that Laura, a class lady, should have to put up with that. Bush needs a little Bocephus "Attitude Adjustment." There are too many football coaches these days, that use foul language on and off the field. Bob Knight is a basketball coach with an "unbridled tongue." You're not going to believe this, but football games are so well filmed, digitized in today's terms, that there is always a camera on the coaches at all times. Watchers can read the mouths of the coaches who roam the side lines. It is shameful. Wilkinson was a Christian man. He knew James' Epistle, in which James warns the followers the importance of containing ones tongue. A Christian can't be a Christian if their mouths cannot be controlled. "All things in moderation."
James 3:9 "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. (10) Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers this should not be. (11) Can both fresh water and salt flow from the same spring?" (NIV)
Yet we live in a time when foul language is tolerated on recordings for children to hear. I'm sure, Bob, you and Bud would have been offended by many in our society, especially our president, whose mouth is weak. Out of his mouth comes buzzards, serpents, and doves. Most certainly, the doves would be dead when regurgitated by this president.
Bob, ... we need a new office in our White House - The Office Of Good Words. The good words should be started in the military. Tommy Franks, I'm sure was a good soldier, but his tongue was not "bridled," when it should have been. Professionals don't need to use foul language. The only ones who use foul language do so because they feel inferior and have no professionalism in them. OU had a coach for one season, who could not bridle his mouth nor his tongue. He didn't stay long. He couldn't even count the number of players on the field and would blame all of his problems on his players.
Bob, I gotta' tell you that, as a retired 34 year teacher, for students of 5 and 6 year olds, there was never a time that any of "my students" heard me utter anything but professionalism. Today we have the Internet and foul language is abbreviated or starred where the extra letter should be. Foul language cannot be hidden. All who read it know, what words are being said.
I'm sure you know that President James Garfield, even when shot twice, never uttered a curse. If Jimmy Carter could contain The White House tongue, all proceeding presidents should follow his guide-lines. Filth is filth, and we don't need it in The White House, or while drunk around an open mic. Alcoholism is the great unbridler of the tongue, body, and brain, and Bush's favorite word is not acceptable on my postings. I run a foul-word free Internet home page. The New Testament is free of foul language, and our own speech should model that which was richly esteemed in President James Garfield's day, as in The Epistle of James.
(Bob Kalsu was the only professional football player killed in the Vietnam War.)
Bob was selected as an Oklahoma Sooner All-American Tackle in 1967. As an eighth-round draft pick of the Buffalo Bills in 1968, he started eight games at Guard and was voted the team's top rookie in 1968.
He began fulfilling his ROTC obligation with the US Army following the '68 season and started his tour of duty in Vietnam in November of 1969, where he served with Battery C, 2nd Battalion, 11th Artillery, 101st Airborne Division.
His MOS was 1193 - Field Artillery Unit Commander. LT Kalsu was killed by mortar fire on July 21, 1970 at Firebase Ripcord near the Ashau Valley.
