Unity, teamwork lead to victory for everyone

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Psalm 133:1

With football season rapidly approaching, I often remember a quote by a former football coach who won two national championships and made Notre Dame the powerhouse it was during his era.

“You know what it takes to win. Just look at my fist,” said Ara Parseghian, Notre Dame coach from 1964 through 1975. “When I make a fist, it’s strong and you can’t tear it apart. As long as there’s unity, there’s strength. We must become so close with the bonds of loyalty and sacrifice, so deep with the conviction of the sole purpose, that no one, no group, no thing, can ever tear us apart.”

He realized in winning, there has to be great unity amongst the team and in that unity is strength.

We can learn many things from this statement. Just as a football team’s ultimate goal is to win, it should also be the ultimate goal of a military community as well.

There are times we must come together as a community more than at other times and find strength. We do this through being united.

The word unity has many definitions but I want to focus on three in particular.

The first is “a condition of harmony, in one accord.” The only way a team of any kind can have harmony or be in one accord is by working together instead of against one another. They become so close that they have one sole purpose, so no one can destroy what they are fighting for.

The second definition is “the quality or state of being made one.”

When we move from military community to military community, it looks different each time and for each person, but in that process we can become part of the community and be unified.

The third definition is “a totality of related parts: an entity that is a complex or systematic whole.”

Even though we are each part of a different family and different in many ways, we all have one thing in common – there are times we all need each other and need the community. In that way, we can relate to each other.

Being part of a military community can be a very complex – and at times hard – thing, but it can also be very rewarding.

Military communities experience things that civilian communities do not, and go through times together other communities cannot understand.

But through these times we can have the victory if we stand united together.

There will be times that this will take sacrifice from each one in the community, and being loyal to each other.

This starts with unity.

Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a young poet, once said “Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.”

The community known as Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson can bring wonderful things to fruition if we stand united together in loyalty to each other, and if we do not let circumstances tear us apart.

Through unity, we will be victorious.

What part will you play on the team?