Posted on 06/06/2013 4:46:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Over the last seven decades, 115 veterans of World War II have served in the United States Senate. This week, the last of them, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, died.
Two World War II veterans still serve in the House -- Ralph Hall of Texas, who was a Navy pilot, and John Dingell, who joined the Army at 18 and was scheduled to take part in the planned invasion of Japan.
There aren't likely to be any more members of what Tom Brokaw labeled the Greatest Generation to serve in Congress. All surviving World War II veterans (except a few who lied about their age) are at least 85 years old.
In the 68 years since World War II ended, veterans of the conflict have played an outsized role in American politics -- more than veterans of any other conflict since the Civil War.
No one paid much notice when Barratt O'Hara, the last Spanish-American War veteran in Congress, died in 1969.
Nor did anyone direct much attention to the retirement from Congress of the last two World War I veterans in the 1970s -- Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana (who lied about his age to enlist) and Sen. John Sparkman of Alabama (who served in the Students Army Training Corps).
In contrast, World War II veterans made a big splash in politics starting shortly after the war ended. Dozens of young veterans were elected to Congress in 1946, including future Presidents John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
The two had offices near each other and, as Christopher Matthews chronicled in his 1996 book "Kennedy and Nixon," were on friendly terms until they became political rivals.
When they ran for president in 1960, both were in their 40s -- a vivid contrast with the much older presidents of the previous two decades.
From Kennedy's victory that year until George H.W. Bush's defeat in 1992, a period of 32 years, every president served in the military during World War II, although Lyndon Johnson's service was brief and Jimmy Carter did not graduate from the Naval Academy until after the war was over.
Many other members of the Greatest Generation entered politics early and made a mark. Lloyd Bentsen, first elected to Congress in 1948, and George McGovern, first elected in 1956, were both bomber pilots, an extremely hazardous duty.
Three future senators -- Philip Hart of Michigan, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Bob Dole of Kansas -- first met in a rehabilitation center in Battle Creek, Mich., where they were recovering from serious wounds.
More than 400,000 American servicemen died in World War II -- 100 times the American death toll in Iraq -- and the lives of millions were disrupted. But wartime service also opened up opportunities for many.
One of them was Frank Lautenberg. His prospects seemed dim. His father died when he was a teenager, and his mother ran a sandwich shop. But thanks to the G.I. Bill of Rights, he was able to attend Columbia University.
Most big corporations in those days did not hire Jews for management positions, but Lautenberg was able to get in on the ground floor of a startup company called Automatic Payrolls Inc.
Automaic Payrolls filled a niche created by the wartime institution of income tax withholding. Businesses needed someone to do the paperwork, and Lautenberg was hired as a salesman by the firm's founders.
Soon he became head of the renamed Automatic Data Processing (ADP), and under his leadership it processed paychecks for about 10 percent of the national workforce. With the fortune he made, Lautenberg was able to pay for his first Senate campaign in 1982.
Like many but by no means all World War II veterans, Lautenberg was a liberal Democrat, a fighter unafraid of navigating the sometimes troubled waters of New Jersey politics.
He retired from the Senate in 2000 but was happy to be called back by Democratic politicos to replace his scandal-struck colleague Bob Torricelli, with whom he had a stormy relationship, on the 2002 ballot.
The Greatest Generation has had a long and sometimes stormy run in American politics. Lyndon Johnson was tripped up by Vietnam, and Richard Nixon by Watergate.
Ronald Reagan did much to restore the faith in institutions that seemed so strong in what his generation always called The War.
Now, with just two World War II veterans in the House, the Greatest Generation is finally passing on into history.
Glad to hear it. How would you like to live under...er...Chris Christie?!
Living under Chris Christie sounds terribly sweaty. ;)
I just couldn’t resist that joke. He was just on the radio here, breathing heavily into the microphone!
Oh, go away!
The last two pics made me laugh...then made me sad.
Hope all is well with you Windy.
Howdy, Exit. Good to see you. Things are well with me and mine. Business is hopping, so I don't get as much time to post as I used to. I guess that's a good thing :-)
Happy to hear business is hopping. Someone has to keep this economy going ;)
And were a disaster in the child-rearing department.
“It was a wonderful world, the post war world...”
Nice picture.
In my minds eye I see the nurtured, freshly clipped lawn, the slow drifting smoke of the barbeque. I can hear the strangely soft voices they used when discussing the war or the politics of the war, cupping their Pabst or Schaffer, ‘Lucky’ pinched between their fingers, one of those blurry tattoos peeking from a white undershirt sleeve.
Sometimes something such as your post spurs one of those mental videos and I feel a terrible nostalgia. Maybe it wasn’t as special (the time, the era)as we make out but it was the bit of theirs that they shared with us and it is gone...and here we are...
You’ll get no argument from me on that.
Your post is so beautiful it brought tears in my eyes. All my vet relatives playing poker on a summer day. The grass always mowed and emerald green. Kids, completely unsupervised (after the war, who gives a damn if your kid falls off his bike?!) and if you did yourself harm, it was your own fault. Baseball, stickball and stoopball. Lucky Strikes and yellow fingers (remember those nicotine-stained fingers?!) One thing I remember: no one every spoke abut the war.
Funny you should mention the lawns. I have a theory about that grass: That at some point, under the influence of the great psychological screw that was WWII, a HUGE number of people promised themselves that if they came out the other side more or less in one piece they'd take it easy, smell the roses, FOR REAL! Imagine going from cataclysm over 4 long years to Peace and Quiet in an afternoon?
The Boomers they sired would, in terms of Moral outrage, rake them over the coals for the seemingly small things that contented them. But the boomers had only known the peaceful world their parents had bought with blood and terror and could never comprehend the Joy of small things that their parents knew.
A HELL of a lot of effort went into those lawns and, I think, a HELL of a lot of peace was found upon them (well, at least until the damn kids became teenagers).
As a boomer, I know we had it pretty easy the first 45 years. I do not think our old age is going to be a picnic. I think it is going to be filled with death panels, limited and lousy health care, bankruptcy and a government gone wild. Perhaps it’s better to have a rough start in life and a softer end like my parents did.
Yeah, I was born in ‘58 and I was happy that I’d missed ‘Nam by literally months. Now, in “middle age”, we may be called upon to stand up. Ah well.
Yeah, Baby Boomers fought and died in Viet Nam (as well as others, of course). People who hate BBs always forget that. One of the worst memories in life was waiting for my brother’s lottery number (which turned out to be high) to come up. This was in ‘69 when many people had completely turned against the war.
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