Another one in The Book Book

April 19,1995

Notes from the Cadillac Ranch

There's a lot of history in the news lately. It's the 50th anniversary of important WWII events. Discussions of how to commemorate those events have been hot and heavy and tinged with political correctness.

The controversy over how to show Roosevelt's disability at the new memorial being built for him has gotten pretty strident. We all know that he had polio and that he used a wheelchair. We all know that he concealed his disability so that he could be shown as a strong leader. The cooperation of the press in not publishing photographs is seen as a relic of the time when there was more respect for national leaders. We need to remember that those were pretty serious times - the Depression and WWII gave us more to think about that how our president put his shoes on.

Now the advocates of the disabled want Roosevelt's leg braces and his wheel chair to be included in the memorial under construction. I don't know the answer. There's bushels of irony there - part of the reason there hasn't been a more elaborate memorial to FDR built sooner is that he didn't want one. He gave specific instructions that he be remembered with a block of white marble the size of his desk that was placed in the location he named.

As for his obligations to his fellow handicapped, he used a great deal of his personal fortune to develop the Warm Spring, Georgia, rehabilitation facilities and he worked with the March of Dimes as well. The extent of his disabilities may have been glossed over but they weren't secret.

After a great deal of public controversy, the Smithsonian's display for 50th anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb has been toned down to a section of the Enola Gay and a photo of a mushroom cloud. It's been 50 years since the fire bombings of German cities as well.

World War II involved massive and incomprehensible suffering by millions of mostly innocent people. The U.S. didn't want the war, in fact we tried hard to stay out of it, but the things we did to end it were pretty awful. There doesn't seem to be a way to pay tribute without alienating somebody.

A ghost from a more recent war showed up last week among the memories of WWII. Robert McNamara's memoirs made the front page of the Sunday papers. Now in his late 70's, the Kennedy-Johnson administration's secretary of defense says the war in Vietnam was a big mistake. It looks as though McNamara waited for his fellow Best and Brightest Dean Rusk to die before he told the truth. The secretary of state went to his grave certain that the U.S. had done the right thing. The whiz kid bean counter from Ford kept his integrity as well.

Today is my baby's 2th birthday.