Awareness of Our Past

Lest We Forget

Last week's post examined "What Makes America Great?" with the focus on our Constitution and the unique form of government our founding fathers created.  This week's post emphasizes the importance of the continuing need for Americans to know our history.  I have written in this blog just how difficult it is to interest young people in the importance of history, given their tendency to think that anything that happened a few years before they were born is ancient history and probably not worth knowing.

I just read a wonderful collection of speeches given at several universities by David McCullough in a book titled The American Spirit, Who We Are and What We Stand For.   One of those speeches, titled "Knowing Who We Are" given in 2005 speaks directly to the importance of knowing our past history.  McCullough writes:  "And it seems to me that one of the truths about history that needs to be made clear to a student or to a reader is that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened.  History could have gone off in any number of different directions in any number of different ways at almost any point...  Actions have consequences.  These observations all sound self-evident.  But they're not--and particularly to a young person trying to understand life."

Visiting Historic Sites

McCullough offers several suggestions for making history more accessible to students, starting with doing a better job of making sure our teachers know history so that they can tell the stories of history in a more exciting way than by sticking closely to the dullness of textbooks.  His further suggestions for improved teaching of history include improving textbooks so that they are not so dreary, avoiding content that reads as if done by committee, and expanding the teaching of history to young children when they have a particularly facile ability to learn.  Beyond the classroom, encouraging parents to take children to historic sites, and to share with their children history and biography books they particularly enjoyed.  McCullough also urges parents to talk with their children "about what it was like when they were growing up in the olden days.  Children, particularly young children, love this." 

The last suggestion I referenced above had a particular resonance with me.  Recently, my husband and I were having a wonderful dinner with friends.  The father began sharing an interesting memory about his grandmother's brave immigration to America just in time to escape the Russian Revolution.  His story was filled with details that held the interest of everyone at the table.

Sharing ancestral history, in this case, my father's grade school

When he had finished, my husband spoke directly to the man's college-age children, urging them to find a way to record these family conversations, and urging them not to  delay too long.  Holidays are a perfect time to spend an evening with family, listening to and recording these wonderful  stories.  My husband asked if they had heard the stories their father had just shared, and when they replied that they had not, he emphasized that if these family stories were neglected, once their father was gone, the stories would be lost forever.  "If you wait too late," he warned them, "you would no longer be able to ask your dad to repeat them, would you?"

"No," both young people admitted, but the man's son added, "But, I could look the Russian Revolution up on my phone," pulling his phone out of his pocket.

Learning how choices make a difference

I confess.  These are good friends, and we are fond of their kids, but his flippant reply annoyed me, and I blurted out, "That sounds exactly like the smart-aleck reply a young man would make."  I probably should not have been so outspoken, and while I tried to make it a bit of a joke, I meant it.

Fortunately, our friendship is close enough that my comment did not end the discussion with hurt feelings, and everyone recognized the difference between imagining an ancestor in a historical moment and reading online a summary about immigrants leaving Russia for America.  It also sunk home with the young man that had his great-grandmother waited too late to leave, his ancestral line would have been interrupted and he would almost certainly not have been born.  That was a real opportunity for our young friend to recognize, as McCullough said, "that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened" in history.

To emphasize how stories can bring history alive, McCullough references E. M. Forster's definition:  "If I say to you the king died and then the queen died, that's a sequence of events.  If I say the king died and the queen died of grief, that's a story.  That's human.  That calls for empathy on the part of the teller of the story and of the reader or listener to the story."  Historian Barbara Tuchman understood that the secret to teaching history is simple:  "Tell stories."

Sharing my own  stories with high school graduates

American history is filled with compelling stories--exciting, tragic, triumphant--but we tend to teach them sequentially, like marking off years on an empty calendar, with the stories reduced to dates.  The more that family history is shared in stories the better their children will place themselves within historic events, and the more that teachers bring history to life with stories and biographies the more interesting and memorable history can be.

Our own lives, like the life of my young friend whose great-grandmother fled Russia, were shaped by our family history.  Collectively, our nation's past shaped the America in which we now live. How can we truly understand and appreciate what those generations before us did to shape this nation and give us the freedoms we enjoy if we are ignorant of our past? And, how can we recognize our own responsibilities if we ignore that inheritance from them?  As McCullough says:  "...we should never take for granted...all the work of others who went before us.  And to be indifferent to that isn't just to be ignorant, it's to be rude.  And ingratitude is a shabby failing."

Happy Holidays to all of you who have supported this blog.  Perhaps, if you gather with family during the holidays, you may find time to share family stories and create an awareness for the youngsters listening of their family's personal history and how the events and choices made by their ancestors brought them into existence.  As McCullough reminds us, nothing had to happen just the way it did.

Celebrating a Century

Our Aunt Celebrates her 100th!

On October 20, 2016, my husband and I had the privilege and pleasure of joining our family to celebrate the 100th birthday of our dear Aunt.  On her birthday friends in the community where she has spent her adult life waited in line to wish her Happy Birthday.  Some times during the 3-hour reception the line extended outside, and although she hated seeing their long wait, she wanted to let each person know how much she appreciated their having come.  One of those waiting was a baby only a few days old, one hundred years separating their births!

The next afternoon family members gathered for a second day of celebration and photographs.  The mother of one son, she now has three grandsons, two great grand sons, and two great granddaughters, the youngest of which is 95 years younger than her great grandmother.  

5-yr-old great granddaughter

She is an accomplished painter in oils, and some of her paintings were displayed.  We selected an art book as one of her gifts, but another gift was truly a gift from my heart.  My mother had begun embroidering a pair of pillow cases, one of which I finished for Mother.  I remembered the remaining unfinished mate to the pair and finished it for our aunt, in effect giving her a gift from both my mother and me (although Mother died six years ago), completed with thread from my collection which includes thread from my husband's mother and grandmother--our aunt's sister-in-law and mother-in-law.

Lyn giving our aunt the pillow case

We also found a 70+ year old photo of her and her husband with a group of family and friends.  We made copies to share with the family, and although she could not recall seeing the photo, she did recall the day it was taken.

Our aunt and her son with photo

Family enjoys the photo

The family gathered in a circle to share fun memories we recalled about her.  Music has always been an important part of her life, including giving piano lessons and playing piano at her church.  My husband recalled the memory of his Aunt as his piano teacher--a short-lived experience.  

However, he particularly wanted her to share her memories concerning all of the changes she had seen in her lifetime.  She remembered how excited everyone was by the news that Charles Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic, although as a 10-year-old girl she did not quite understand the achievement of Lindbergh having left Roosevelt Field on May 20, 1927 to fly alone across the Atlantic and land at LeBourget Field near Paris 33 1/2 hours later.

She continued by recalling how her father had taken her to see Charles Lindbergh when he came to Atlanta on October 11, 1927.  She remembered standing in the crowd watching him land at Chandler Field in Hapeville (near Atlanta) at 2 p.m. on a drizzly afternoon to be welcomed by a crowd--in which a father and a little girl not quite eleven stood.  Lindbergh was welcomed by Atlanta Mayor Isaac H. Ragsdale and Georgia Governor Lamartine Hardman and was taken to Atlanta where a parade was held with 20,000 people gathered along the route.

Her memory may not have included specific dates, but she definitely remembered the excitement of his flight and the experience of going with her father to see Lindbergh's return to Atlanta, the city where her family lived prior to their move to Kansas.

She also recalled both of her brothers having served in W.W. II.  With the experience and wisdom of age, she reflected on how her parents must have worried until the boys were safely home again.  She admitted that she was a young teacher at the time and loved her brothers very much, but it was not until she was older, with a family of her own, that she could truly understand her parents' feelings.  Later, she married a young man who had also served his country, and she enjoyed telling us how her father had a hand in playing matchmaker!

Byers, Kansas Grade School Band about 1954

It was a very special occasion for her and all of her friends and family, but it was also an excellent reminder that not all of our history is to be found in books.  Just as past blogs have included information about the preservation of old photographs, this blog reminds us how important it is to listen and record the memories of family members. In a fast-changing world, we do not need to be 100 years old to have memories of things our children and grandchildren will never experience.  Share your own experiences and record the memories of other family members before they are forgotten!