Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

I was greatly aggrieved when Sen. Barack Obama opted to remove the American flag pin he was wearing on his lapel. Citing some nonsense that it was divisive, but subsequently in the heat of the presidential race he chose to start wearing it again despite his pastor calling for God to “damn America!”

I was equally upset by his wife, Michelle Obama when she declared a few months ago that, “This is the first time in my life that I am proud of my country!” For an educated person past forty and a shining example of someone living the American Dream to say something as egregious as that is beyond the Pale.

So just what is it that’s bothering the Obamas? Candidly, I don’t know, but I would like to relate an experience I had half-a-century ago and perhaps, the Obamas (and some readers) might learn something from it: In October 1941 my family moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx and I had to start attending a new school. I was twelve years old and had never even been to the Bronx before we moved there.

I was a bit on the chubby side, Jewish and not a great athlete so I had trouble making friends in what was primarily an Italian student body. The only boy that would play with me was a small, thin black boy. To the best of my recollection, he was the only black in the school so he might have needed me as much as I needed him.

The first time I went to his house I had an extra treat; his father was a New York City policeman and he let me look at his gun after I promised never ever to touch it. Plus, he had an older brother who would play ball with us once in a while. We always played in his house because, as I understand now, he was afraid to venture far from his house in an all white neighborhood. We went along like that for months on end, including Saturdays when we went to the movies together.

Then came Pearl Harbor. A day or so after Roosevelt’s “a date which shall live infamy” speech I was playing in my friend’s house after school and heard his older brother, who was seventeen, say to his father, “sir, I want to enlist; you’ll have to sign for me.”

The father – he was still in uniform – rose silently from his chair, “What do you want to carry the white man’s burden for?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

“Sir,” the young man said, it’s my country, too! I just got to do it, sir.”

The father stood silent for a long minute: “Well, then at least join the navy, son; they might not even take you in the army. Besides, you’ll have a clean bed to sleep in. Bring me the papers and I’ll sign them,” the father said, as his first-born rose and they embraced.

The family moved shortly after that, so I don’t have a fitting end to the story. But perhaps this will do: may God continue to bless America with people both black and white, who know that we are all are living – despite its imperfections – in the most wonderful country on the face of the earth.

Epilogue: Out of respect for their privacy, I left out the names of the boys and their parents.