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Last week I enjoyed an exchange of Thanksgiving memories from 1967 and 1968, on and near military posts. As for many of my generation, the Vietnam War significantly shaped my life. Years afterward, a young adult told me, “Oh, yes, Vietnam. We studied that in my history class in high school.”
What happens when experience becomes history? It’s not just the passage of time, like when a babysitter calls your record albums a great set of oldies. The Vietnam era as presented in history textbooks seems only distantly related to my experience. That’s not to say the textbooks got it wrong. Texts portray the big picture: causes, turning points, effects on national politics or international relations. Lived experience is mostly small picture. Stationed in eastern Africa, how do you explain to the furniture maker why you need an eating table by the fourth Thursday in November? What do you do when your spouse gets reassigned to Southeast Asia the week after you confirm a pregnancy? In May 1970, four students in Kent, Ohio, were shot dead by National Guardsmen during a protest of the invasion of Cambodia. I was in nearby Oberlin for a three-day visit to line up student housing for fall. Joining a vigil, babe in arms, I fretted about how to find housing fast when the entire campus had closed in response to the news from Kent. Friends who lived in Kent at the time describe frantically trying to cross town to get their children from day care, when protests made the streets impassible. Mundane matters like housing, day care, or a Thanksgiving table fall outside the purview of most histories. To sense what it was like to be there, you’ll learn more from diaries, letters, memoir, or well researched historical fiction.
13 Comments
Lisa
11/28/2016 08:43:33 am
So, true, Sarah. So, do you have diaries from the day for your now-grown-up babe with babes of her own to understand that time's impact on you? Or have you written some of these memories down for your descendants? To me, it's these personal memories that really make history come alive and interesting for the people who didn't live it.
Lisa
11/28/2016 09:46:45 am
I mean, not that we didn't necessarily "live" the history, but I mean, for those of us who didn't experience the events that make it into the history books... Lisa, good point. Alas, I haven't written them (yet). I kept all Andy's letters from Vietnam, but now can't find them, which may mean they got mildewed and tossed. With email and other electronic communications taking the place of letters on durable paper, I wonder if future readers and researchers will face a shortage of personal sources that have been preserved in any way.
Lisa
11/28/2016 09:56:44 am
"They" say that will happen, but paper mildews, or becomes lost in a million different ways. My mother has done extensive writing about her life. And she is appalled that my brother-in-law never talks to his dad (who is in his 90s) about his life. I remind my mother that neither the brother-in-law or even the 90-year-old father cares, so she should quit wasting mental effort on their lack of action! We can't save other people's memories. In fact, neither of my sisters have a single molecule of interest in our own family history. Your story as the wife of a soldier should be told, though, and you have the skill to accomplish that... :) "We can't save other people's memories." So true. Still, I found it very rewarding (for me and I think for him) to interview my father in his late years about his childhood Christmases, and to hear his memories of Halloween and Armistice Day (the original one). Family histories may be one of the main places the stories of a personal past are being preserved, and local historical societies are happy to have these in their collections.
Lisa
11/28/2016 10:14:43 am
Cuz, you know, reading about a war or battle that some soldier was involved in is one thing, but learning that almost everyone who knew that soldier was also affected by that battle is what makes history relevant. Without that, a practical person like me would say, "Who cares? Why should I know about that battle?"
Lisa
11/29/2016 08:10:41 am
Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is written like that. Story about a missionary family moving to Africa, told by the wife and three daughters.
Rhonda Peterson
11/28/2016 11:25:46 pm
Although I remember exactly where I was when I heard about Kent State, and the campus disruptions afterward, your story, Sarah, reminded me more of an experience I had with the massive WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 (I think). Because of the protests and threats of violence (or maybe there was some violence, I'm not sure) near the hotel where the WTO meeting was being held, the city had established a protected zone for several blocks, with the police keeping the public out. I had gotten a call from the nursing home on the other side of the city where my mother was, letting me know that she had become unresponsive and they were sending her to the emergency room. The hospital, unfortunately, was near the hotel in the protected zone! So I raced there to meet my mother's ambulance, only to be stopped by the police barricade! Luckily, once I'd found someone in authority and explained my purpose, the police let me through. But now when people here refer to the WTO protests, I can only think of how frantic I was to get through to help my mother!
Lisa
11/29/2016 08:14:52 am
I remember exactly the day of 9-11. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law were half way over the Atlantic, on their way to visit us. Plane was diverted from O'Hare, but to where? Were they in Labrador, or France, or Atlanta? Could we jump in the car and go fetch them? I described it in our holiday letter, and it still gives me chills to read it, and makes my eyes tear and water when I describe it. (The plane was returned to London, they knew nothing of what had happened until they landed and all trains were halted there and they had to take a bus back home, some 90 miles.) Chills indeed. Did they eventually make it over or have to cancel the visit? My son was in Pasadena that morning, about to race to the LA airport to join his family in Hungary, when a neighbor phoned to tell him to turn on the news. He had to phone Lufthansa to check the status each day until flights resumed. Rhonda, your Seattle WTO experience rings so poignant and makes the point keenly. It's a very close (and even more painful) parallel to the experience of the friends in Kent. Did you know Paul and Susan Cox in Chicago? Paul has written beautifully of their experience in Kent in May 1970 and the aftermath.
Lisa
11/30/2016 12:30:57 pm
Yes, sister-in-law and her husband came about a week later, on a half-empty plane. The pilot had come on mid-flight and said, Oh, sorry, O'Hare is closed today, we have to return to London, and in those days of innocence, the British passengers shrugged and didn't think much of it. (I think I would have had at least a FLEETING thought that the world might be coming to an end...) I also remember Kent State, although I was a kid. I remember after that, when parents or grandparents would tell me I'd go to college, I was horrified. Students got shot when they went to college. Did NOT sound like a good idea to me. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin.
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