For Love of a Brother

The ESPN documentary series "30 for 30" has presented some wonderful pieces in its fledgling existence. One of its most recent offerings, a short film called "Arthur and Johnnie," touches particularly close to home for me.

The film explores how the Ashe brothers, Arthur and Johnnie, were both serving in the U.S. military in the late 1960s.

After seeing multiple sets of brothers killed in action in World War II, the U.S. Army adopted the Sole Survivor Policy in 1948. Other branches of the military adopted similar codes generally preventing brothers from serving in combat operations at the same time.

Johnnie was sent to Vietnam. In keeping with the policy, Arthur, a blossoming tennis star, was sent to West Point.

Recognizing that his brother had a year of military duty still to serve, and realizing that Arthur could be sent to Vietnam once his own tour of duty there had ended, Johnnie volunteered to serve a second tour in Vietnam.

That spared Arthur Ashe from combat in Vietnam. Johnnie sensed Arthur didn't have the disposition to handle combat and he knew his brother had the chance to become a pioneer in tennis. That's just what Arthur did, becoming the first black man to win the U.S. Open, Wimbledon and the Australian Open. He went on to become a legend as a tennis star and as an international humanitarian. He didn't know of his brother's sacrifice for years. Johnnie told no one except their father.

This story resonates because my father was drafted to serve in World War II. Normally, when a family has multiple eligible sons, the oldest son was the one drafted.

But in the case of the Finger family in Larned, the oldest brother - Leonard - was skipped. Instead, Marvin Finger was tapped by the draft board.

It wasn't until after Marvin returned home to Larned after the war that he learned from the head of the local draft board that his father had told them to pick Marvin instead of Leonard.

As Francis Finger had put it, Leonard was too valuable to the farm to go off to war. In other words, Marvin - who liked to joke and laugh and often drew criticism from his stern family that he didn't take life or work seriously enough - was expendable. Leonard was not.

But my father wasn't crushed by that revelation.

"It's a good thing I was sent overseas instead of Leonard," he would tell me years later. "Leonard wouldn't have been able to handle combat. He wouldn't have made it home."

Dad, like Johnnie Ashe, made it home from combat. They both paid high prices internally for what they endured. Dad also suffered physical injuries that dogged him the rest of his life.

Yet it was a price he was willing to pay for the sake of his brother. Much like Johnnie Ashe would later do for Arthur.