By Vern Holmquist
While it will be 10 days or so before this goes to print, I must start with the events of the day, Election Day.
I have never been more proud of our country. On Nov. 4, we made a great stride for humanity, we have grown-up, we have shown the world we are still a nation in which we judge a man not by his color nor his religion but by the trust and hope he can instill in our people, inspiring us to reach a higher plain among the nations of our world.
On watching the results of Election Day, I was not listening to the words that were said. Instead, I studied the faces and not just the black faces, but the faces of young and old of all races in Grant Park, Chicago. Never before have I witnessed this degree of emotion. In my years, these were among America’s finest moments. My eyes filled with tears of joy and my chest filled with pride. It is now up to us to live up to this historic day. We have a rough row to hoe but we have a guiding light. God bless America.
I am old enough and clear-headed enough to remember the Great Depression and the bums whose form of transportation was riding the rods under the railroad boxcars to get to somewhere, anywhere there might be a chance to earn a few days’ pay. My mother – as did many mothers – fed these men on the back steps of the home using what food they could spare after feeding their own families. These men did not ask for a free handout, instead they were willing to earn the meal doing any little chore the women needed done.
Our family moved from North Dakota to the fertile Gallatin Valley in Montana which, like our fertile Willamette Valley, produced an abundance of food. The farmers and ranchers earned enough money from good crops and herds of cattle to keep our banks open. My father, who was a building contractor, won a contract to build a large dairy barn on the college campus. While he found work and was able to keep a crew of men on the payroll, we still had to go out into the mountains where we found a vein of very poor quality coal. It was sufficient enough to warm our house, so we dug and dug.
A man named Franklin Roosevelt had plans to dig us out of the Great Depression. Did you know Roosevelt scared the hell out of half the population with his new and innovative programs just as many of you maybe are afraid of the recovery plans of our new president-elect? Roosevelt pushed his programs through and they worked. You’ve still got shoes on your feet haven’t you?
I remember the CCC camps that unemployed young men from all over the country. They signed up to work for our government by improving our infrastructure, building dams and bridges and cutting trails through our mountains. Some of us more fortunate looked at these young men with a degree of apprehension. We suspected perhaps they were in CCC camps because of some run-in with the law. Girls were tempted to shy away from them.
A few of these men would attend our dances and introduced some new swing steps not seen before in the West – this was near the beginning of the glorious Swing Band era. Their camps were crude by today’s standards, but these were good men and their work was hard manual labor and they were grateful.
If you think these conditions could not exist today, don’t bet on it. Maybe it won’t hit the fertile Willamette Valley, but we are all part of a big nation and we would feel part of it.
Keep the faith. We must do the best we can with this new start. I see the light.
