Mine was the generation who heard about “the war”, over Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners. We heard about it at family barbecues, and our cousins’ weddings.
My dad served with the First Armored Division, and fought in North Africa. My friend Sherry’s father served in the Pacific. On VJ Day, he was tasked with carrying drunk sailors, who had passed out, to a side street, where they wouldn’t get stepped on.
Cousin Ruby was a captain in the Army Nursing Corps. We think Cousin Dorothy was one of the first American women in Berlin, after the surrender. But she didn’t talk about it.
They were the fortunate ones, who came home.
There were the others. The ones whose graves are decorated with flags today, who gave everything for freedom.
Dad was a staunch Republican. He voted for Nixon. I think he may have done it more than once.
When I was nine, my class did a kind of generic, and really bad, unit on American Indians. I got interested, and dad bought me Oliver La Farge’s “The American Indian, Special Edition For Young Readers”. (I think that meant they cut out all references to sex and put in more pictures.) We read it together, including the chapter on Indigenous people in the twentieth century, which was not cheerful. But we read it. Dad explained to me what Jim Crow meant. Because he had a serious down on injustice, and he thought I should know that it happened.
When I was older, he got me reading Sinclair Lewis.
I don’t suppose Dad and Mr. Lewis ever voted for the same candidates, but dad liked “Babbit”.
It all boiled down to the message mom and dad worked hard to impress on us, Fascism is bad.
This came with other messages; think for yourself, question, don’t obey blindly.
My mother told me, “Following along with the mob is the height of stupidity.” I thought of that on January 6.
My parents’ generation struggled and sacrificed to defeat fascism. It’s one of the reasons people call them the greatest.
Some of their descendants are struggling and sacrificing to bring Fascism to the United States. It’s as though they have forgotten what their grandfathers and great grandfathers fought for.
Dad would have said he wanted his children to be free to make jokes about our leaders. Be free to strike for better pay and working conditions. Be free to marry whom you wanted and choose whether or not we would have children and how many children we would have.
It meant being free to read what we wanted to read, see the kind of movies we wanted to see, sing the kind of songs we wanted to sing. Choose the candidates we would vote for.
They had seen pictures of the Nazis burning books. They would have shuddered, reading about Moms For Liberty, who are the heirs to Nazi book burners.
They didn’t sacrifice for money, or fame, or power. They fought for FREEDOM.
On this day, when we remember fallen heroes, we need to remember what they gave their lives for.
Do not forget what our forefathers and foremothers fought and died for.
Do not forget.
Do not forget.