A President, a War Bride and a Teacher
Published in Marietta Daily Journal April 10, 2016
If truth be known, more precisely if
truth be acknowledged, we all owe much to so many. We owe the parents who raised us, friends who
have befriended us, and communities that shaped us.
There is probably no rarer
combination of creditors, or influencers, than that of a president, a war bride,
and a high school teacher, but that combination is exactly what most fed my thought-world
during my youth and touches my heart to the present day. Believe it or not, that combination of people
was intertwined by world events, that is, by history.
This particular president, while
still an active Army general, made his mark during World War II. A future sister-in-law, still in Europe at
the time, lived through it, and an astute history teacher absorbed it all and
taught it.
When 11th grade American
history came along, I was ready - at least for the 20th century
chapters. Believe me, I had been
schooled on the Depression and World War II.
Though enrolled in a public school, my brothers, sisters and I were
homeschooled - informally/conversationally, that is - before homeschooling was
widespread. Breakfast, dinner, and
supper (our terms at that time) seldom went by without some mention of the goings-on
around the world.
In our home, Dwight D. Eisenhower
was a presence. Having gone from general
to president, he smiled down on the nation. In a fashion, his was an era of
good feeling. He wasn’t a Democrat, but for right now, that was ok because our
brothers Paul and Pete, who fought bravely in World War II, admired him. They had no interest in a Solid South, Democratic
or otherwise. They cared only that
Eisenhower, Patton, and McArthur had saved the world from Hitler’s and Japan’s
scourge.
It was Paul who brought an Italian
girl into the picture. He met and
married her in Trieste, Italy and brought her to the states the year Eisenhower
was elected. Antonia (but allow me her
affectionate Italian nickname, Pupi) infected our lives with knowledge and
vistas we could never have gotten from textbooks. Imagine the brightness brought to the lives
of a provincial, southern farm family by one who knew and loved the Adriatic
world and enjoyed talking about it.
Finding
southern heat almost insufferable and inconsistent English pronunciations
inexplicable (tough, through, bough; tuff, thruff, buff?), Pupi endured. She, too, loved Eisenhower and America. Her
family had lived under Mussolini’s fascist thugs since 1922 and under stern
Germany before Italy annexed Trieste.
For all its beauty as an Adriatic harbor city, Trieste suffered direly
from Nazism and Fascism, and Pupi could recount for us virtually every detail
of Trieste history and of the effect of WWII on that storied city.
Margaret Richardson may not have
been an aristocrat, but she held to aristocratic values in the finest of
ways. A “town lady,” her goal was to
instill in us small town and country urchins the nation’s history. This she did with nothing but a textbook, a few
maps and a strong belief that knowledge of history was tethered to freedom
itself.
Mrs. Richardson spurned the phrase
“current history.” (“There’s no such thing. It’s current events.”) So every Friday was current events. Nothing she said and nothing form the U.S.
history book differed from what Pupi had described. A true blue Dixiecrat, she still liked
Republican Eisenhower. She disliked his
phrase, “the military-industrial complex,” claiming he was belittling the military
that made him great, but appreciated his call for other NATO nations to do more
to defend themselves. Did I beam when
she said, “Roger, didn’t you have two brothers in World War II? You might agree with me.” (I only smiled
timidly, not yet having fully grasped what NATO was.)
When Mrs. Richardson learned about
Pupi, she insisted I bring her to school and have her talk to the class, but
Pupi was not confident with her English just yet. Sad, because the two of them would have
enjoyed talking about Eisenhower.
Yes, history is the thread that binds
eras and individuals. The intertwining
of that thread touches and connects unlikely people in unimaginable ways. We neglect its study at our peril.
When Napoleon marched his troops
into Egypt, he told them that forty centuries of history would be watching them
from the pyramids. Having been
instructed already by Napoleon on “the eyes of history,” French troops wiped
out almost the entire Egyptian army. Napoleon’s “history lessons” had inspired
them.
Three of my chief creditors – a
general, a peasant girl, an astute teacher - are as disparate as were Napoleon
and his uneducated troops. But like
Napoleon’s troops, I learned and was inspired because history brought them
together.
Roger
Hines
4/7/16
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