This Independence Day, my hero is my old friend Dennis Waters, who exemplifies what is best about our country. Dennis’ response to such a statement would be unprintable, even in this newspaper: he has no pretensions to grandiose sentiment. His philosophy, if he even considers himself to have one, is probably something like, “You do what you have to [expletive] do.”

Dennis served 18 months on a nuclear submarine, because he joined the Navy for four years to stay out of Vietnam. He got routine medals and, later on, two lymphomas, which the government says have nothing to do with all those submerged patrols bunking next to the nuclear reactor. But the lymphomas certainly caused the amyloidosis that triggered the rogue protein buildup in his vital organs and nearly killed him.

Dennis grew up down Hwy 78 east of here in Thomson and came to the University of Georgia, where he spent more time working than studying and bounced around to other schools, too, before he eked out a degree in education.

He taught a year, married and moved out of state, where they wouldn’t honor his degree, managed convenience stores, came back to Georgia, worked his way up to manager in a manufactured homes business, and after four years of that, got a job teaching history in an inner-city high school in Atlanta, sometimes moonlighting back at the convenience store, where he was held up at gunpoint three times.

After 25 years of teaching, seeing the worst and the best of education and coming to respect his students as much as he disdained the educational bureaucracy, he bought back his military time, threw in all the sick days he never took, and retired with 30 years service.

Then Dennis moved back here, living on his teacher’s retirement, taking care of his absentee friend’s Five Points home, sitting on the great front porch with his lifetime collection of tropical plants, reading history and fuming at the idiocy and selfishness of the Republican Party, consoled by Bob Dylan, Sonny Terry, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and lots of others of their ilk.

By the time the cancers showed up, Dennis was on the way to getting Medicare along with the teacher’s retirement insurance, and, boy, was he going to need it. “If it wasn’t for Medicare, I’d be dead,” he says.

Dennis signed up for several experimental treatments and chemotherapy at Georgia Health Sciences University in Augusta, and the lymphomas were pretty much under control. But then he went through a miserable two years of respiratory problems that nobody could solve. Then the amyloidosis AL was discovered, with its buildup of insoluble protein and fluid in his kidneys, heart and lungs. The doctors realized that only radical measures would save him, and the Stem Cell Replacement Unit took over. That’s the operation where they extract the patient’s own stem cells and freeze them, then nuke his system with intensive radiation to wipe out the cancers, the amyloidosis and his immune system. Then they introduce his own stem cells back into his body and wait to see if they can take hold.

Dennis survived the operation, even though his heart stopped beating on the operating table. He got through it, and now, after 70 days in the hospital, is back sitting on the porch among his plants, slowly building his strength with physical therapy, quarantined to home for another six weeks to be sure his immune system can protect him. Through it all, he has had the assistance of friends and most especially the loving care of his son Michael, his two sisters Angie and Claudia, and their husbands, Ronnie and Craig, who now are taking turns providing ‘round-the-clock care until he can make it on his own.

Dennis served our country under the ocean and in the trenches of our education system and is now living on the retirement and health care he earned by hard work. Through it all, he has held onto his irascibly profane good humor, his love of music and reading and his never-flagging interest in the world around him. “What’s happening?” he always asks, and wants to know what he can do to help.

When we celebrate on July 4 “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we are honoring citizens like Dennis Waters and everybody else who gives to our country through committed service and hard work.