Category Archives: Franklin D Roosevelt

That’s All

Colonel Clark used to bring his young son down to the dojo where my brothers participated in judo lessons. Judo had been my grandfather’s idea and he faithfully chauffeured the boys, and I sometimes came along too.

My Grandpa Ray always sat with Colonel Clark, if the old gent happened to be present. That meant I sat with Colonel Clark too. The two old men would talk and talk, seated next to one another, though their eyes remained fixed on their boys on the mats. They never seemed to look each other, but remained absorbed in their conversation.

My own distracted attention span only caught snippets of the murmuring discussion. “MacArthur, Wainwright, and Bataan,”  came up in their exchanges And despite my youth, I understood something grave, something momentous lay behind the back and forth of these two men.

Later my older brother filled in the substance of what I reluctantly overheard.

Colonel Clark had been left on the Bataan Peninsula with around 12,000 American soldiers when General Douglas MacArthur evacuated the Philippines in 1942. Under the new command of General Jonathan Wainwright the Americans surrendered to superior Japanese force, among them young Clark. The Japanese summarily ordered this defeated army to march some sixty miles through the dense, humid and scorching jungle. The purpose of the Bataan Death March was cruel attrition; death by exposure, heat exhaustion, dehydration, and starvation. American numbers dwindled. When a captive stumbled, or fainted from heat stroke, or dehydration, the penalty was an immediate beheading. Young Clark bore witness to this historic moment of living hell, and he clearly never separated himself from that ordeal.

Bataan had fused forever into his being.

And that that same ordinary old gent who chatted quietly with my grandfather had a young son was a miracle. In light of his wartime ordeal, Clark should never have survived much less sired a child.

The valiant are everywhere. 

For example there was George, the high school janitor.

For many years this little old fellow cleaned the litter-strewn halls where I taught American history. Equipped with two hearing aids, this diminutive man pushed an immense dust mop, wider than he was tall.

To a passing eye George moved about nearly invisible. Just a friendly, gentle, and harmless grandfather.

As I pontificated about D-Day, Tarawa, and the Bulge to sleepy Juniors, a foot or so of mop often slid and stopped by the open classroom door.  Silent, George hid as I blathered on about the Second World War. A short time later I learned this quiet 80-something had once handled a M-1 Garand, shivering aboard one of those heaving and crashing Higgins boats, churning  toward destiny on Omaha Beach. George had been in that first wave in June, 1944. 

Humbled to learn our little janitor was a living, breathing hero, I became the student. “So George, what do you remember most about that morning?” 

The old warrior rasped in a high, faded voice, “It was awful early, and the water was awful cold.”

So understated.

Another veteran crossed my path at the high school by the name of Roy Cortes. His son, our school Resource Officer brought Roy by to visit with my students. And another narrative of a remarkable life unfolded.

As a teenager Roy was hired by FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps. In the forests of Idaho Roy Cortes fought fires, built campsites and lookout towers for the US Forest Service. But in late December, 194, after Pearl Harbor, Roy headed straight to the recruiting office, and was sworn into the US Army.

Roy, too, had ferried over from Southampton England, the afternoon of that bloody June day.

“What do you remember most about the invasion, Sir?” a student asked.

The affable elder smiled slightly, then a cloud passed over his expression. “I lost everyone in my outfit. I was real scared. Then I had orders to regroup with other survivors on the beach. You see, that was bad because I’m Mexican-American, and my first platoon got used to me, and the bullying had stopped. Now I had to start all over with the slurs.”

“For days, as we moved inland, these fellas giving me the business. One time this guy says, ‘Mexicans can’t shoot.’ I said that I could. So he said, ‘Ok Manuel, Jose, or whatever your name is. Show me you can shoot.”

“See those birds on that tree branch up ahead? The guy pointed. Shoot one of those.’ I lifted up my rifle and aimed at the branch and pulled the trigger.”

At that Roy again begins chuckling. “I missed the branch, the birds all flew away, and twelve Germans came out of a grove with their hands up.”

Astounded, no one spoke. Then a huge wave of warm laughter filled the classroom. Roy simply smiled and shrugged.

Colonel Clark, George the Janitor, and Roy Cortes. They were just kids whose lives became defined in ways we civilians can never fathom. They were scared, and hot, and cold, and hungry, and suffering, and ultimately lucky enough to come home to America.

They married, raised families, and move on with life.

That’s All.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

The Flats

It was mid-summer in 1932 Washington DC. A giant shanty town, popularly known as a “Hooverville” had sprouted in an open area on the Anacostia Flats. Veterans from the First World War had made their way to the Capital, bringing their desperate families to persuade Congress to pay a promised bonus for military service in the Great War.

America had hit bottom by 1932, the country devastated by the 1929 Stock Market Crash that drifted into the Great Depression. Raggedly men, women, and children somehow had traveled to the city, all desperately hoping the promised bonus could be issued at once rather than 1945, the date set by the provisions of the law. These people brought little and had nowhere to go except to throw themselves on the mercy of a Democratic House, Republican Senate, and a Republican President.

Scrapped tin, packing crates, chicken wire and other material made up the shacks on the Flats, with folks making homes that were better than nothing. The Hoover administration was not happy a bit with these scruffy people descending on Washington and opposed paying the bonus (dollar amount depending on service records) as it would unbalance the national budget. The “Bonus Marchers” as they were called, roamed around the city, many in bare feet, speaking to reporters while filmed by newsreel companies such as Pathe’ News, and Hearst Metrotone News.

Finally on June 15, 1932 the House approved paying the bonus, but the bill had to find approval in the Senate. Two days later a Republican led Senate rejected the bill, dashing the hopes of destitute veterans.

After the vote Senators exited the Capitol through the underground rail system safely avoiding the stunned marchers outside.

By July 28 President Hoover had had enough of the vagabonds. He ordered General Douglas McArthur to use his troops to expel the marchers from the Flats. At the end of that meeting the President cautioned the General to avoid violence at all costs.

McArthur directed his men, including two young Majors, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, to fix bayonets and follow dispatched tanks into the shanty town. Briefing his troops George Patton instructed his men that “If you must fire do a good job — a few casualties become martyrs, a large number an object lesson. . . . When a mob starts to move keep it on the run. . . . Use a bayonet to encourage its retreat. If they are running, a few good wounds in the buttocks will encourage them. If they resist, they must be killed.”

Hmm.

Thinking along the same lines General McArthur ordered tear gas lobbed and setting fire to the rickety camp. In the melee two Bonus Marchers were killed and a 12-week old baby succumbed to tear gas.

The camp burned through the night and with it Herbert Hoover’s reputation. Four months later, In November Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the White House in an electoral landslide.

In America real change rises from us, the people, not from the White House. When citizens of this nation have had enough and demand justice, justice shall be done.

William Hushka of Chicago and Eric Carlson of Oakland, California perished in that long ago assault. Another casualty was infant Bernard Myers who lost his brief life from tear gas related complications. These citizens were indeed George Patton’s martyrs who still deserve to be remembered.

As do Renee Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis.

Stay the course my friends, We are The People and possess enormous power. Let us use it.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

The Business of America

President Calvin Coolidge once famously proclaimed “The business of America is business,” which meant his administration would pursue a “hands off” approach toward the business sector over the interests of the American people. In office from 1923 to 1929 President Coolidge kept to his pro-business principles that, in turn charged the roar into the Roaring Twenties.

By the end of October 1929, six months into the new Hoover Administration, Coolidge’s lax policies came due dropping the Dow Jones Industrial into free fall. This financial catastrophe capped off a decade of easy money made through frenzied and unregulated trades, not only by wealthy holders, but by regular folks taking stock tips from friends or newspapers.

A large portion of these everyday newbies purchased shares “on-margin,” meaning 10% down with 90% on credit, usually borrowed from private banks. The only collateral required was the promise of certain and endless gains. And why not? The market had grown at an astounding rate from $27 billion in the mid-1920’s to $87 billion by 1929. 

Coolidge’s free-market detachment produced a carnival atmosphere with everyday people hot in the market game.

By 1932 the party was over. The now suffering nation had had enough of hands off and predatory money practices. Massive unemployment, thousands of bank failures, hunger, homelessness, and a Dust Bowl in the heartland brought America to its knees, and Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House.

Seeing nothing beneficial for the American people in catering only to the rich, FDR brought an end to GOP policies. His administration instead offered a New Deal for economic revival. Through a massive legislative agenda Roosevelt and Congress intended to not only meet the emergency, but restore economic growth, and eliminate the conduct that led to the Depression in the first place.

One of the most popular New Deal relief programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps. Unemployed young men were put to work throughout the nation building trails and campsites in forests like the Great Smokey Mountain National Park, and urban building projects like the River Walk in San Antonio, Texas. (Consider that idle young men in Germany at the same time donned Black and Brown Shirts and broke heads for Hitler.)

Addressing the chaotic banking system FDR proposed systematic changes. Some 6000 banks had failed between 1930 and 1933 before the new president took office. Panicked depositors waited in long lines to demand their money until banks simply ran out of cash and locked their doors. Confidence collapsed. 

In his first days Mr Roosevelt announced a Bank Holiday where banks closed for four days to stop panic withdrawals. Auditors then inspected banking institutions across the country and surprisingly many banks were deemed solvent and reopened. Not finished with banking, FDR also took to the radio to explain the banking system, and with his cheerful confidence encouraged the public to take cash out of their mattresses, coffee cans, and backyard holes and return deposits to local banks. Thousands did just that. 

In order to prevent another such economic catastrophe the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), was passed by Congress to protect the public from high risk banking practices. One piece of the law was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, which is still in effect today. Depositors had the backing of the federal government to protect their funds from any loss. Moreover the Roosevelt Administration was determined to keep people in their homes, many of whom were facing foreclosure. The Home Owners Refinancing Act provided federal assistance to those who had paid their mortgages in good faith, but now faced eviction. 

In the first hundred days of Roosevelt’s New Deal 77 laws in total were passed by Congress, all aimed at restoring the health of the country. To the majority of Americans it felt like this president truly cared about their wellbeing. Roosevelt’s ascendency to the White House, next to Abraham Lincoln’s certainly stands as the most consequential in America’s continuing experiment in self government.

On a side note Franklin Roosevelt suffered from polio and could not walk, though he believed he’d walk again. FDR never gave up. And the truth of the matter is it took a man in a wheelchair to put the United States back on its feet. Franklin Roosevelt, unlike his predecessors knew that the business of America is “We The People.”

Gail Chumbley is a history educator, author, and playwright. Her work includes River of January, River of January: Figure Eight, both available on Kindle, plays Clay on the life of Senator Henry Clay, Wolf By The Ears a study of American slavery, and Peer Review where Donald Trump meets four past presidents.

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