Jan 9 2012
Each January I attempt to bring a message for the year ahead. Perhaps the strongest message I can offer for 2012 is one of hope. One of the projects I completed this year was a booklet about my Father’s struggles in life from his early year’s on a farm in the Great Plains, through his time in the battles for the Pacific while serving in the Seventh Fleet during World War II. It gave me a much wider perspective on our times.
We, as Americans, struggle each day under the doubts and fears of what the economy may do for us, or to us. We worry about our health care and our children’s future being as bright as ours once seemed. We wonder if our jobs will be there to provide security. However, let’s stop a moment and compare our anxieties to the time of my Father who was born during the Great Spanish Influenza Pandemic. Almost three-quarters of a million people died in this country between 1918 and 1919 from that flu. Some figures say that one in a hundred Americans perished. Imagine that today. And later my Father almost died from a diphtheria epidemic that killed almost 15,000 people in 1921, with a 20% fatality rate in children. He survived, only to watch the prices of commodities plummet, and drought move over America’s Heartland, leaving his family farm devastated even before the Great Depression. In the 1930s great clouds of dust ravaged the farmlands as the country saw 1 out of 4 working people become unemployed. That dark time then moved right into World War II where over 400,000 men and women died in service. All of this happened to one generation…and what became of those who survived? They were the ones that picked themselves up and built the greatest nation on Earth.
What made that generation so tough and so resilient? Was it solely their religion? Was it just their stamina? Was it their training or education? No… it was their ever present belief that there was hope for a better time and that the struggle to survive would lead to improved lives. Even in their moments of tremendous fear and anguish, they moved past the pain and terror with their shield of hope and their trust in their roots: their heritage, knowing that those before them struggled mightily as well, and survived. Just as the farm families kept root cellars to store away food for the trials of winter, that generation stored the memory of their predecessors and the history of what they had overcome.
So, with all of our concerns that this New Year brings, can we not muster up the faith and hope of our ancestors? We drink clean water each day. We have access to electricity, food and generally decent healthcare. We aren’t on ration stamps. We have free education, for those who will take advantage of it, through the years of high school. We are not under the immediate threat of armed invasion. How often we forget the treasures bestowed on us by those who walked before us. So keep, dear readers, faith in yourselves and your heritage. Find the joy you seek in your family and friends, while remembering that hope and hard work will get us through these times, as it did the tough generations of the past. Let our root cellars sustain us until we reach a new prosperity.
Sincerely,
Rick Tobin
Among the silent there is always harmony.
