“At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled
with innocent adventure, love and the lessons of the workaday world, they were
fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape
of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria and the coral islands of the Pacific.
They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and
ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands
of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not
protest.
They succeeded on every front. They won the war; they saved the world.”
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
— from Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”
Tom Brokaw wrote himself onto everyone’s bestseller’s list with “The Greatest Generation,” published in November of 1998.
As the book’s jacket explains, “Brokaw goes out into America, to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation, America’s citizen heroes and heroines who came of age during the Great Depression and the Second World War and went on to build modern America.”
“The Greatest Generation” describes a generation united by a common purpose and by common values – those of duty, honor, service, love of family and country and, above all, responsibility for oneself.
Brokaw was right. Never has there been a generation more willing to sacrifice. Not only the men and women who served overseas, but those working back home to produce the goods and services the military needed.
There was a measurable sense of pride back then – a feeling that everyone shared in an enormous responsibility.
So does that sense of pride – of responsibility – still exist?
I think it does, but for some reason it’s become buried under a layer of political correctness.
Why does it seem sometimes that we shouldn’t make such a big deal out of rooting for the good guys?
U.S. and coalition military forces roll into Baghdad, sacrificing their lives to free the Iraqi people from a dangerous tyrant, and we mostly take it all in stride. It’s as if we don’t want to cheer too wildly and upset the other side.
I guess you can blame the media, to a degree. Sometimes in the rush to show that there are two sides of a story, the media goes out of their way to be “fair.”
What’s that, there are a couple of dozen Brown University students demonstrating on the quad? Send a crew. Woody Harrelson of “Cheers” fame is giving a speech on foreign policy? Stop the presses!
It seems to me we should be just a bit more proud of our might – of the awesome responsibility we have accepted in policing the world – of having the courage to truly fight for world peace.
Locally, we should be especially proud of those companies that are making such significant contributions to the war effort. I’m not sure they get the recognition they truly deserve.
At KVH Industries in Portsmouth, Chris Watson, a spokesman, tells me that the employees have long taken pride in the work they do for the U.S. military and allied forces. KVH produces navigation systems to guide Humvees through sandstorms. A couple of months ago, workers from KVH visited a U.S. military base to meet with Special Forces units.
Knowing where the technology is going – and meeting with soldiers whose lives will depend upon it – tends to instill in a worker a deep sense of pride.
“We know what our systems are capable of doing,” said Watson.
In recent weeks, he said, there has been a heightened sense of pride. That tends to happen when you turn on MSNBC or CNN and the technology you helped make possible is leading our troops into battle.
“We don’t often get to see our products in use,” said Watson.
At Bradford Dying Associates Inc., a Westerly-based company and one of Rhode Island’s oldest textile manufacturers, workers have been producing the outer shells of chemical warfare suits.
The factory has been producing 100,000 yards of the fabric needed for the suits each day. Michael Grills, the company’s owner, told Providence Business News last week that he felt proud that his company was helping to outfit the soldiers.
He should. The work being done there is vitally important.
So should Max Brickle and the folks at Northwest Woolen Mills in Woonsocket. That’s where 370,000 wool-and-synthetic blend humanitarian relief blankets have been produced and then shipped to locations in Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait.
I won’t argue with Brokaw.
The generation depicted in his wonderful book changed the world. Our generation has a ways to go. But we do some good things. We’ve just forgotten that it’s all right to take pride in that.
