The American Story: Hero from Protagonist

In 2013, my dad traveled to Iowa to meet one of his World War II buddies. Among the requisite clothes, travel food, and camera, he brought seven albums replete with memories and black-and-white photographs of the places the two had served in the Seabees together. My wife, uncle, and I accompanied him, not really knowing what to expect. What I certainly did not expect was a major shift in my view of American history.

I had always known history is story. My college professors taught me that. However, I had never put a literary spin on The American Experience 102: 1900-Present. I did after that  weekend seven years ago.

If I were going to be all English-teachery (and I am), I'd call the meeting's location a distinctive setting. Iowa City, Iowa. Not a metropolis, but as the home of the University of Iowa and located smack-dab in the middle of the cornfield that is Iowa, the city provides a unique mix of urban and rural climates. All one has to do for change is walk a couple blocks off campus.

For this story's structure, that's it for exposition. Two men. Iowa City. GO!

The plot jump-started as we finished registering at the hotel and discovered Dad's friend Weldon with his daughter waiting just inside the lobby door. After a brief introduction of the families, the two started what they came for.

Picture two 90-year-old men who hadn't seen each other for over two decades. One would assume there would be some testing of the waters, catching up, getting reacquainted.

No. These two began talking as if they had never left off from their last Seabee reunion back in the 1990s. As they chattered, the rest of us watched transfixed.

This was not simply old memories manifested in aching, aging bodies. Here were two uniquely kindred spirits, revealing the character not only of themselves today, but who they were seventy years ago. Through them we saw a world we had never known–what the earth was like and the character of America before we were born.

For years historians and pundits have called people like Dad and Weldon, those who served in WWII, the Greatest Generation. 

Greatest. Listening to these two veterans speak, one knew that greatest is such an inadequate superlative.

Great. Greater. Greatest. All are used to describe the sacrifice, the perseverance, and the accomplishments of men and women who fought, suffered, and died in the Pacific and Europe. The good guys. The protagonists of the war story. While these attributes are significant, they barely touch the totality of the contributions of people like Dad and Weldon.

These men and their fellow servicemen shared more than memories; they created a world which is foreign to those of us living today. As they talked, the story became far larger than just theirs. It was the American Story. 

The plot of the American Story differed from theirs, not simply due to the passage of time, but because of a major complication—the deterioration of national spirit and goals.

Prior to Pearl Harbor the whole globe had suffered ravages of the Great Depression, a time when people struggled here and elsewhere to simply survive. But in America, that struggle was internal.

With the advent of war, something changed ... for the worse. And the better.

War is never a good thing. But this complication to the story changed the direction of the nation. Through the hell of death and destruction of battle came a resurgence of spirit. The veterans' discussion revealed that WWII was not merely America pitting its forces against the Japanese and Germans, but it was a whole country marshaling its will and resources to defend its honor and way of life.

Scientists, engineers, and clerks joined with soldiers, sailors, and flyers to create the machinery for fighting the war. Crane operators  worked with road builders to establish and supply bases through the world  When attacked by the enemy, ALL Americans returned fire. When duty called, personnel changed jobs, locations, even branches of service. No task was too large or too menial. What needed doing, everybody did.

At home, petty political bickering gave way to thoughtful, careful planning. Leaders, united in common cause, cooperated to provide the armed forces the best chance of victory. Industry shifted production. Workers left traditional roles to assume new and necessary ones. The country accepted and supported fuel and food quotas.

Everybody was in the fight together. Warriors. Civilians. Government. Industry.

Then the war ended. But not the story. The country did not stop. Weary of conflict, the heroes returned from the conflict with a desire for peace, a pride in their accomplishments, a dedication to honor and morality, and a newborn confidence in America’s ability to do whatever it needed to do.

The people who fought and won a war developed the interstate highway system, improved the national  infrastructure, created unimaginable medical and scientific innovations, fostered a strong education system, and believed wholeheartedly in the attainability of the American Dream.

Learning from the war experience, they accomplished those tasks with the same approach, "we, not I."  And the men who fought the war taught that attitude to their children and grandchildren excitedly and emphatically.

For example, when I secured summer employment after high school working at a public sector job, Dad gave me a piece of advice I remembered all my life: “Remember. You are working for the people of the state of Minnesota. They deserve your best.”

Here the literary analogy takes a turn. 

One would hope for the fairytale ending "They all lived happily ever after." Unfortunately, one would have to assume the war was the climax of the story and the recovery the denouement. One would be safer calling the recovery merely an interlude.

Times changed. Generations passed. 

The whole story that became America changed.

Our localized setting became international. Complications became new conflicts—Korea, Vietnam, Civil Rights Movement, Watergate. 

Tensions rose and fell—Iran Hostage Crisis, Clinton's Impeachment, 911.

Characters big and small came and went, striving to become the new protagonist. 

Far too often, those characters were flawed. 

Far too often the American Story's themes of honor, duty, and virtue gave way to utility, greed, and expedience.

"Okay. The whole literary ting is getting out of hand. You're just a naysayer. You think the story is a tragedy."

Oh, no. I don't. I don't think the story is over. I think it's like a James Michener novel going on and on and will get better and better.

That's what I learned that weekend. If America has proved anything in its two and a half centuries, it is that it is uncommonly buoyant and brilliantly hardy.  

In the hands of a lesser people, a lesser foundation, this story would have died a quiet death in the dusty corners of history. But in America's history, crisis becomes opportunity. From an over-bloated cast of characters motivated by power and gluttony have materialized people of substance—leaders and heroes, motivated by character—to renew and sustain what is truly American. People like the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, the Lincolns, the Roosevelts.

Like the heroes I listened to that weekend in Iowa.

Thanks, Dad and Weldon