Today is Pearl Harbor Day, and most people get the FDR classic speech wrong: saying it's a Day, not Date, that will live in infamy. The Freshman Comp Professor in me always sees that and hears nails on a blackboard, but what are ya gonna do?
Anyway, as a FaceBook friend, Miles, pointed out, PHD is truly the birthday of the Greatest Generation, which included my parents. I tell the story each year that my Dad shared, but like all holy days, it bears repeating.
I imagine my Dad in his job, which his father got him with a textile company, called the schmata (rag) trades. He was a shipping clerk, which meant he schlepped full dress carts from factory to factory. He used to sing as he worked, and a few taxi driver's actually said "Hey kid, you're pretty good --you should go on Major Bowles' show." He did, and made it a few rounds. Another son of immigrants did better on that talent show -- his name was Sinatra. But that's a different story...
Anyway, all of a sudden, as he recalled it, the city stopped, like in a movie. Everyone ran to the open shops, where all the radios were playing FDR's famous speech. Dad knew right away he'd be drafted, and he was, in April.
He left his girlfriend Sunny back in the Bronx, and they wrote to each other daily. Boy would I love to have those letters, but my Mom, the ANTI hoarder, tossed everything when they moved from NY to Florida. If I would have had baseball cards in a collection, those would have been gone, too.
In 1943, I think it was, Sunny, who had never been out of the Tri State area, got on a transcontinental train and made it all the way to Southern California, where Dad was stationed. He used to joke that no Japanese ships or submarines attacked Pasadena on his watch. They were married, and Mom got a job working for the Dean of Cal Tech. They rented a small bungalow up in the hills above Colorado Boulevard. Mom would have coffee each morning at Owl Drug. As of 2000, the building was still there, but a GAP store.
Anyway, Mom got pregnant, and Dad sent her back to the Bronx to have the baby, since he had no idea if he'd be shipped out, leaving Mom alone. In fact he WAS supposed to go fight in the Battle of the Bulge, but had his life literally saved by a Colonel he met one night at a Texas base. But Mom went back East, and my sister was born there in January of '45. My Dad met her for the first time nearly a year later.
Our family was thus begun. My other sister came along, also in the Bronx, in June of '48, and I was at the tail end of the Baby Boom in July of '61.
But all of our modern history, as well as the modern history of the US, is easily traced back to that fateful day.
Our nation came together so beautifully to fight the enemies of Japan and Nazi Germany. Italy, though a member of the Axis, was to me always just a hapless accomplice.
I really hope that we come together again, this time to defeat the plague. The science is on our side. I hope the politics let it work. And wouldn't that be just grand?
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