BRIDGING THE GENERATIONAL DIVIDE ON TOBACCO ROAD
INTRODUCTION
The June 6 comments on D-Day had the highest readership of any of my posts. Because of this reader interest, we will do a series on people I met on Tobacco Road who were members of that Greatest Generation. Unlike the paratrooper who died at Normandy, these men came home, and their stories will be about what they achieved after World War II.
WE DON’T SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE
In my D-Day post, we mentioned young people’s lack of historical perspective. It is easy for an 82-year-old to criticize, yet unfair. Eight months ago, I heard a young man speak about the differences among the five or so generations in America today. (My generation does not have a name. We are between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers.)
He said that our beliefs and attitudes are shaped by two things – the era when we grew up and the values our parents gave us. He cited his reaction to the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy. He was distraught and unable to see anything but disaster ahead. His parents offered little help. Then his grandfather told him, “This is bad, but we will get through it. It is not the end of the world.” Why the different outlook? His grandfather had lived through World War II.
The lesson I took away is that we should teach history to younger people with stories, but we must remember that we are speaking a foreign language to them. Our history span is two, three, or even four times theirs. While an event in 1945 is vivid in my mind, they connect with it no more than if it had been in 1645 - because they did not experience the event and it is not in their “memory bank.”
KEEP THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE
We all tend to magnify adverse events. We let our imagination run wild about possible outcomes. We think that “nobody ever had it this bad.”
For almost 30 years, I have been a student of World War II and have come to revere the “Greatest Generation” who lived and died in that cataclysmic event. One of them gave me a lesson that bridged the generation gap. Simple, yet profound.
A FAMILY CHALLENGE
On a Sunday in December 1985, my wife and I got a call from the headmaster at Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Dr. Bruce McClellan told us that our son, a senior at the school, had left campus and was on his way to Pakistan. We could not believe this was true. But we located him at Kennedy Airport as he was about to board his flight. Judy and I did not stop him, but we cautioned him that he was making a “life decision,” and that he would bear its consequences forever. (A fact totally lost on a 17-year-old.) And soon he was halfway round the world without any plan that we could understand. We were in a “crisis.”
THE HISTORY LESSON
A few weeks later, I visited Lawrenceville to get my son’s belongings and speak with Dr. McClellan. I was still sorting out what all this might mean for our son’s future. The headmaster invited me into his office. This is what he said, “You recall that at your son’s orientation, I told the parents that our purpose was to make these boys into men - to make them free from ignorance and free to make their own decisions and way in life. Your son achieved that goal five months early. He will be fine. He will go on with his life. There are much worse things than going to Pakistan at 17. (Pakistan was more benign then than it is today.)
“When I was a few months older than Charles, I was flying a bomber over Germany.” [i]
That sentence gave me perspective on what a real “crisis” is. Dr. McClellan had obviously seen and done things that I could only imagine, things that gave him clarity and wisdom that I did not have. I left thinking that my son was certainly not in imminent danger. He could grow up quickly and find his way just as Bruce McClellan said. I did not have to go to bed each night wondering if a telegram would arrive tomorrow telling me that he had been blown out of the sky somewhere over Europe.[ii]
BRUCE MCCLELLAN - A SCHOLAR AND DEDICATED TEACHER
Bruce McClellan was born in 1924. He graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1941 and enrolled at Williams College. In 1943 (15 months older than my son when he left Lawrenceville) after his sophomore year, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, and served as a bomber pilot. He saw combat service over Europe with the Eighth Air Force and earned the Air Medal with clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He separated from service with the rank of Captain.
In 1945, he returned to Williams College and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1946 with highest honors in English. He studied for two years at New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to Williams College as assistant dean, a post he held one year before becoming a member of the Lawrenceville School English Department. He was the beloved headmaster of the school from 1959-86.
Near the end of his career, we had the brief conversation that left such an indelible impression. He was one of the Greatest Generation who did his duty as he saw it. He could have gotten a student deferment and stayed out of the War, but he went anyway. He put the life he had planned as a scholar and an educator on hold to become one of the Greatest Generation.
[i] Dr. McClellan’s prediction about my son was accurate. He returned from Pakistan and graduated from American University. He spent years abroad and has never stopped traveling the world. Near mid-life, he made a career change and graduated from Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine. He continues to travel to Third World Countries (including Pakistan) as a veterinary consultant.
[ii] The Eighth Air Force flew risky daylight raids over Europe. It had 135,000 men who flew in combat during the war. They suffered 26,000 killed (a 19.3% death rate) and 23,000 (17%) became prisoners of war. Young McClellan’s chances of dying were about 1 in 5.