URBANNA — I recently read a poll that said the majority of Americans dread next year’s election for fear it will be a repeat of 2020. Facing a campaign rerun of the same two candidates running again in ’24 for another go at it seems to me would be like reliving a bad dream.
Such dread triggered memories of past campaigns and elections I have witnessed since being born in the Dark Ages … or 1941, just months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor — yesterday’s “9-11,” which FDR called “The Day of Infamy.” (Incredible to think the majority of Americans alive today were not alive in 1941.)
Remembering the past might be just the ticket I need to accept the future. So today I begin a series of memories of past elections.
FDR (Franklin Roosevelt) was in the White House in 1941. My parents told me they had not voted for him as they had not approved of his extending stay in office over the traditional two-term limit, but when the U.S.A. jumped into World War II in 1941, they were grateful he was our leader and voted for him to stay the course. Wars are a time one would not want to risk changing leadership or chance a second-rate Commander in Chief.
Yet, by the end of the war, FDR was a sick man. He may not have been as strong as he should have been while standing up against Stalin’s demands at Yalta when so much of Europe was to be handed over to the Soviets creating what Churchill later called the “Iron Curtain.” Much tragedy came from that long ago division of land and we are still dealing with problems related to decisions made at Yalta.
FDR passed away while in office and Vice President Harry S. Truman came next. By then I was old enough to remember seeing him on our first black and white TV. I especially remember him saying his famous line “The Buck Stops here!” which meant as president he took the blame for whatever went wrong.
I don’t think we have seen a president since that had such a mature understanding of the responsibility for those who end up in the oval office. It’s human nature to blame others for troubles encountered in life but listening to presidents ever since blame the previous administration for such problems is tiresome.
Truman made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended war in the Pacific with Japan. I have spent a lifetime wondering if that decision was the right one. On a moral sense, no, because it set a dangerous precedent that a nation could kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians during a war.
However, there were many Americans that believed the only way Japan would ever quit fighting was to shock them into accepting peace.
I also remember seeing how angry Truman was when a music critic panned his daughter’s singing debut. The entire country laughed at his comical pettiness but it certainly demonstrated that presidents were just as human as the rest of us.
Eisenhower won the White House for the next eight years. World War II had lifted the general to not only national hero status but international acclaim and I felt sorry for the intellectual Adlai Stevenson who ran against him, not once but two times, but he didn’t have a chance. “I like Ike” buttons were everywhere.
He was a grandfatherly type of fellow and seemed sensible and moderate in his thinking. I remember him for warning us about the danger of industrial military buildup at a time when we were undoubtedly the strongest nation in the world and also for his determination to do what he could to stop segregation in our society. Who better than an Army general to know a Black man can fight as well as a white man and be just as much a hero?
A young, handsome senator, John F. Kennedy, came next and he and his beautiful aristocratic wife brought a sense of “Camelot” to America. He also brought about tax relief to Americans, which boosted our economy to new highs. When Russia started installing missiles aimed toward the U.S. in Cuba, Kennedy took a strong stand and forced the USSR to turn its supply ships back home. Later he ordered the fiasco known as the “Bay of Pigs” which was a planned invasion of Cuba that failed.
In November 1963, he was assassinated while touring Texas. I was just married and working in a department store in San Diego where my husband, Chip, was serving in the Navy.
I remember seeing the stark images on a multitude of TVs against the appliance center wall announcing the grim news. Chip and I spent an entire weekend glued to the television as the funeral took place. I can still see the riderless black horse walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in the funeral cortege. The entire nation grieved the young president’s death. It seemed to me the end of the world.
© 2023
