"There are no dead heroes in our family, only live cowards." That was your motto.

Dad, if you could only see your children now:

A firefighter, an EMT, a Marine… and the least of these brethren and sisters, a daughter known as Chaplain Katie and as Blue Angel.

I gave the sermon at your funeral. Despite your demands that no clergy be present at your burial, they could hardly forbid your own daughter from participating. As I turned from the grave that they'd dug in the tiny German cemetery on Grandpa Silas' farmland in the Pine Barrens, I prayed that my siblings and I would prevail over the selfish defeatism that you taught by example.

I'd last spoken to you on the evening before you died. Your body was gaunt from liver cancer triggered by the same alcoholism which had estranged you from the rest of your adult offspring. Both you and I realized that your time was short.

There were so many things that you could have done, even in those last hours, to redeem yourself and to comfort your family. I offered to make the phone calls, to intercede between you and those whom you'd harmed. But your last words to me, as you ordered me out of your hospital room, were full of self-pity and anger. "Don't talk to me about your problems. I was a great father. You kids were messed up from birth. Nobody ever treated me right. And now look at what God is doing to me. You ought to stuff that Bible where the sun don't shine. Get out of my life."

And so I stood alone at the gravesite, hoping against great doubt that somehow God had reached you in your final minutes. But I'd seen your face when the nurses called me back to the hospital early the next morning. It was contorted with fear, and your cold hands were raised as if to ward off an attack.

I've seen so many deaths in times of war and of peace, and while dying is invariably painful and degrading (there's no such thing as a "good death"), I know that for those whose relationship with the Lord has led them to trust in His forgiveness and to live for the benefit of others, there is a certain serenity in their final moments. You denied yourself that peace. I spent the next five years trying to bring that peace to my siblings and to others in need, with mixed results at best. But I felt stronger for making the effort.

I was a nursing home chaplain when my ring found me. It was a Sunday morning at 10:35. Our organist, a resident in the facility, had rambled on far past her allotted 15 minutes. But the residents loved her music almost as much as she needed to play it, so as always I let it go. I was standing at the pulpit, trying to figure out how to compress a twenty-minute sermon into five minutes - including the altar call and benediction - when I heard a voice saying, "Katie Gruber, you have demonstrated the ability to create great hope in the hearts of those whom you serve. The Blue Lantern Corps requests that you accept this ring, and join us in the War of Light."

I turned to my congregation as they sat in the dusty converted storage room that was our chapel. In the front row were my "wheelers" from the dementia ward - restrained in their wheelchairs, mostly sleeping or drugged into semi-consciousness. At one time or another, I'd known them all in moments of clarity, when their special closeness to the Lord had demonstrated itself. They were our choir of earth angels.

Behind them were the ladies from Assisted Living, with their private duty nurses beside them. They were randomly reading their church bulletins, often upside-down. And the few mentally acute residents, perhaps there temporarily for rehabilitation after a stroke or heart attack, sat in the back rows and watched their fellow worshipers with poorly-disguised terror.

They were my congregation - my church - my people. Love for them overflowed in my heart as I contemplated the ring. I told the ring, "Let my congregation decide this for me." Then I explained the situation to them in a few words.

It was Winnie, dear sweet wordless Winnie, who answered first. With tears in her eyes, she struggled past the bonds of her aphasia to say, "Go. Save. The. World."

Immediately there was a chorus of assent. I thanked them all, leaned over to ask my pianist to continue playing till the nurses returned at 10:45 to collect the worshipers, then raised my hand with a silent prayer as the ring flew onto my right middle finger.

Not my will, Lord, but Thine be done.

I won't bore you with war stories, Dad. For that matter, you probably remember my worst experience yourself, for your anger and selfishness drew a black ring to the cemetery in the Pine Barrens. Facing your rotted corpse, smelling your foul exhalations… it almost stopped me in my tracks. Almost. But the Lord's power is strong in our weakness, and He guided me to raise my hands and pronounce a blessing over you. Honor your father and mother, the Commandments say. You were very hard to love, impossible to respect. But in the end, I was able to honor you by returning you to the peace of the grave.

And at that moment, something happened. From the ground surrounding your grave, a Presence rose glowing brilliantly, blindingly white. I dropped to my knees, burying my face in my hands.

"Fear not," the Presence told me. "And do not worship me, for I am not the Almighty but merely His emissary. Arise, open your eyes, and accept this ring."

It was a white ring, designed to resemble a rising sun. Without removing my blue ring, I raised my hand to the angel of the Lord, and the white ring overshadowed, then blended with my ring of hope.

I was knocked backward by the shock waves from the combined energies. I thought that I'd fallen on a stone or a tree branch, as a terrifying pain shot down my spine. I struggled to my feet, and realized that I now bore the softest and whitest of wings upon my shoulders.

The Presence continued, "You will be known as Blue Angel. In times of tranquility, you will teach the art of healing to those who wear the ring of hope. In times of conflict, you will bring an offering of peace, but if the combatants do not accept it, you will wield a two-edged sword to cleave evil and dissolve it from existence. And on this land of your faithful ancestors, you will build a temple of hope."

I stood on the hilltop for a long while after the angel departed. Then I spread my wings and flew away to join the battle once again.

At the end of the War of Light, my siblings and I agreed to turn Grandpa Silas' farm into a hospital for heroes and a training center for Earth's Blue Lanterns. There are thousands of us now, including the son whom you named after yourself, and who spent his adult life running into burning buildings and cleaning up toxic waste, just to prove that he was not you. Blue Lantern James John Gruber, Jr. is stationed with FEMA on the Gulf Coast, eradicating crude oil from the sands with the power of his ring of hope.

Blue Lanterns are spread everywhere across the face of the Earth. Our last graduating class has traveled to places like the Red Bird Medical Mission in Beverly, Kentucky; the First Church of the Gospel Ministry missionary station in Orissa, India (where one has already been martyred, less than a year after accepting his ring); and the front lines of civil war in a half-dozen countries. When I look at our current students, with skin of all colors and backgrounds of all types, I know that they share the most important commonality of all: the ability - no, the absolute compulsion - to put the lives of others before their own.

Some will succeed gloriously. Too many will die young. All will bear the blue standard of hope into the darkest corners of this world. I pray, and I cry, and I do my best to give them the tools and knowledge that they need.

From the hilltop we can see the Dome of Bludhaven, and the last mailbox on Rt. 34 before the force field still has the name "S. Gruber" on it. It's where new patients turn off the paved road onto the gravel driveway leading to our sanctuary. We call this place the Refuge.

We serve heroes of every stripe - not just the "capes" but also firefighters, policemen, and Good Samaritans generally. With generous funding from certain wealthy mystery men, we provide free care for those who have given their health, their limbs, or their sanity in the fight between Good and Evil. From my office next to the small but beautiful chapel where I hold Sunday services, I can look out on the wooden crosses of the little German graveyard where you are buried - the same graveyard where I will someday rest, and may it be a heroic death. May I give my life without fear, in the service of others.

I may become my family's first dead hero. May I not be our last.