Posted on 06/11/2004 12:31:03 PM PDT by knighthawk
Ronald Reagan would have loved knowing that Sgt. York marched in his funeral parade. Sgt. York, of course, was that horse - a 13-year-old jet-black gelding from New York - that walked so majestically behind the caisson bearing the former President through the streets of Washington Wednesday night, saddle empty and stirrups bearing Reagan's riding boots turned backward. Reagan would have enjoyed the quiet dignity of that horse, but just as much, he would have thrilled at the memory the horse invoked: Sgt. Alvin York of Tennessee, the young draftee who led a small band into fire against a German machine gun nest in World War I. York, leading seven of his American comrades, killed at least 25 of the enemy, took out 35 machine guns, and captured 132 enemy soldiers. The most decorated hero of the war, York returned to his home state to build Bible schools. Years later, Gary Cooper starred in the movie named after him.
If Reagan were still with us, he would dress up that story and tell it in so much rich detail that we would think we were right there on the battlefield, watching agog. Indeed, that's one of the things Reagan did best: tell us stories about ourselves. He especially liked to talk about ordinary men and women who did extraordinary things - to him, America's real heroes.
At his inaugural in 1981, Reagan purposefully chose to be the first President inaugurated on the West Side of the Capitol. That way, he could talk to his audience about the monuments that lay out before him - Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, all pointing to his beloved California. But he also seized that moment to talk about another memorial out in front of him: the Arlington National Cemetery, and then he told the story of Martin Treptow, another young hero of World War I.
Treptow left a job as a small-town barber to go to France with the Rainbow Division. He was killed on the Western front, and on his body was a diary where he had written, "My Pledge: America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."
Back in the Oval Office, Reagan could tear up as he talked about heroes like Treptow. His admiration led him to create a "hero's box" at his annual State of the Union address to Congress. Remember Lenny Skutnik, the first hero up there - the young man who jumped into an icy Potomac River to save women and men who had gone down on a commercial airliner? Reagan thought everyone should know his story.
Reagan told those stories partly because he was so good at it - probably the nation's best yarn-spinner since Abraham Lincoln. But he had a larger purpose in mind, too: He wanted to weave a fresh, vivid tapestry for his listening public.
For much of our history, Reagan believed, Americans had had a triumphant view of their past. But in the social turmoil of the 1960s-'70s, a different narrative had begun to take hold: that U.S. history was primarily a tale of white male dominance, of brutality toward Native Americans and blacks, of discrimination against women, of hypocrisy and imperialism.
It was not that Reagan believed evils had not been perpetrated; he did, and he believed it important to set things right. Whether he did enough is worthy of debate another time. The important point this week is that he told his hero stories because he wanted us not to forget the rest of the story.
In his farewell address to the nation, as he prepared to leave the presidency, Reagan urged us to tell our children about the stories of yesteryear, not to convince them we are perfect but to help them see how ordinary people have so often made America a better place. "If we forget what we have done," he warned, "we will not remember who we are." That's why he would have loved Sgt. York marching in his parade.
Gergen is editor at large of U.S. News & World Report and a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Ping
Not to mention the east side was under construction.
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