During the election season, and especially on this Veterans Day, I have been remembering my late father and some lessons he taught me. I miss him terribly, and I wish we could have talked about the recent election.
My father was born in Canada in 1922, and emigrated to the United States in 1939. He did not immediately join the military after the US joined the war in 1941. His three brothers were already in service, one in Canada, and two in the US, and he helped his mother financially. When she got into a better situation, he joined in 1943.
He served in the Navy on a destroyer tender, a ship designed to provide maintenance support to destroyers or other small warships. He was always proud of his service, and made it clear to me as a child that not all service has to be heroic. That is how he lived his life: in dedication to his family, support for his church, and in interesting but unglamorous jobs.
I was always the son who asked the most questions about his youth in Canada, his early experiences in the USA, and his military service. One thing he found very strange about the US was the racial tensions. He hated all forms of racism (and any other -isms), and was gracious to all. He got into quite a bit of trouble once attempting to improve the nasty bigotry and racism that was common in the Navy at the time. I'll leave that story for another day.
My father was particularly on my mind during the election because I remember being upset about something I saw on Los Angeles television when I was about 8. Somebody was going on and on in an interview about how they (in this case, the Mexicans) were overwhelming us, did not keep clean, had too many children, hung around in big groups, etc. After explaining about ignorance and mistrust, he explained how to recognize such speech in the future. He said that when he moved to LA in '39, people were saying the same thing about the refugees from the dust bowl (in that case, the "Okies" and "Arkies"). His lesson was that the subtext of such speech was always the same, regardless of which group was being named. And when I heard the words terrorist or socialist in the campaign, I wanted to call him up and remind him of our long-ago conversation. I'm sure he would have said that what these people (or at least some) were trying hard not to say N-----. But the subtext of their words revealed what they thought.
I also remember going to bed one night when some of their close friends were over for drinks and late conversation. All the loud talking and extra cigarette smoking kept me awake, and I listened. One couple was doing the "how Jews run everything" bit and then went into some quite insulting comments about Jews in general. The next morning, I asked how he could remain friends with people who thought like that. He said that everybody has good parts and bad parts, and that you can sometimes make things better by staying friends and softening people rather than breaking your friendship and hardening people.
I do not know how my father would have voted in this election. He was always a Republican of the Eisenhower type, but since the middle 1990s he became more sympathetic to Democratic causes as the Republicans went crazier and crazier. I am sure of one thing: he would strongly support Obama as president, as he remembered with fondness how people pulled together through the Depression and the War. Lots of the people he knew were bigots, but he would have stayed friends with them, despite their views, and tried to soften them bit by bit.
Now I am, like my father, in an unglamorous job. I live in Northern Virginia (the communist part). Today I walked over to the WWII memorial in DC and sat quietly, remembering.