I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ “The War” in dribs and drabs over the past several weeks. I really do want to absorb all 15 hours, but imagine I’ll have to rent the DVDs one at a time to climb that mountain.Yet watching the incredibly moving interviews of vets and their families who held down the home front has caused me to give some thought to how my teenage daughter will view that war. I have to guess that for her, World War II will seem just as remote as Valley Forge and Antietam. “Basra,” “The Green Zone,” and “Gitmo” will resonate for her generation 20 years from now, not the Bataan Death March.
I grew up hearing stories about the Depression from my mom and grandparents, and Dad was a pharmacist’s mate in the Pacific. He didn’t talk much about that, though I do remember him telling us that his hospital ship picked up POWs and how ravaged those poor soldiers and sailors were. And he always loved to recount the time his ship docked in San Francisco and he and his buddies got shore leave. Whenever I’d travel to SF on business, he would ask me if Finocchio's was still there, as if the city had been frozen in time since 1944.
But Dad, Mom, and my grandparents are all gone, and I wonder if I’ve done The Button a disservice by not telling her what few stories I can remember about her grandparents’ youth. Announcing “there’s where Granny and the Greats lived during the War,” every time we drive by a particular house on White Street certainly doesn’t address the scope of what her family went through, only one generation removed.
Trite as you may think the term, “The Greatest Generation” is apt. And you might say that Dad and Mom’s stories would be more relevant to our current era than anything I could tell my daughter about the bell bottoms or Reaganomics of my childhood. Though I can’t wait for the week they tackle Watergate in her Civics class.
One of the reasons this country is wallowing in the quagmire of a senseless war is because the men currently in power stood aside when their brothers were called to serve a generation ago. As service men and women come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, we can at least hope that our children will benefit from the serious lessons those young men and women have learned under fire half a world away.
3 comments:
Your note on what The Button may hear in Civics about Watergate brought many memories. When the Watergate hearings were going on, I'd rush home from school (U-M Economics + History) to hear what had transpired that day. Those were thrilling times for the news. The worms in Washington were being exposed for their no-good selves. I hope The Button has an equally revelatory experience - and one without cynicism. That's just how some people act. We don't have to vote for them.
My family lost its remaining WWII vet last week. My father in law served in Africa, Italy and Yugoslavia. My father was a few years too young to have served.
And, yes, he didn't talk much about it. The most I heard was when we visited the Yankee Air Museum together. (He, being from Texas, called it the D**n Yankee Air Museum, with a smile.)
I used to teach adult ed government, and I taught a bit about Watergate. Now this was 18 and 19 year olds, and they had a decent grasp on the basic facts of W'gate. Now I have middle schoolers and they have nary a clue (and it's not in the curriculum for middle school, so there you go).
OTOH, we did a lesson on the presidency last week and I let the kids write fictitious questions to our president. Two of them immediately wanted to know why we are in this war and when will it end? I was so proud!
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