I am old enough to remember snatches of the war—my mother sorting through her ration-book coupons; my sister and I taking bacon grease in a bottle down to get enough money for the Saturday matinee. I also remember being out in the neighbors’ Ford, going somewhere with them, when honks starting going off—the Japanese had surrendered!
One of my former neighbors was a child in Germany during the war. Sylvia told me that she remembered attending the 1936 Olympics with her parents and recalled her father holding her up to see the Führer, Göering, and Goebbels, in their respective Mercedes-Benz limousines. She was willing to discuss the war, but I never pressed her because, obviously, there were many sad memories—her father was killed in the fighting. She married an Air Force man and came to this country long after the war.
She might have been surprised when I said that I envied her—not that I admired Hitler, Göering, and Goebbels, but because she witnessed history! It’s almost akin to being in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. Most of us, who were around then, experienced someone saying, ‘Turn on the radio/television—the President’s been shot!’ Ditto the jets flying into the World Trade Center towers.
I’ve Got a Secret—a popular television quiz show during the 1950’s—one night had an elderly man as contestant. After the usual questioning, one celebrity panelist asked, ‘You weren’t, by any chance, at Ford’s Theater when Lincoln was assassinated?’
He was—he was five years old and remembered John Wilkes Booth jumping from the presidential box onto the stage (when the actor broke his ankle) and telling his father, ‘That man’s hurt!’