Last August I was reading about the Battle of New Orleans and, recognizing the profound impact the b
attle had on Jacksonian Americans,
offered the idea of “historical postcards”-- those events that are seared into the memory of an entire generation.
At the time I suggested five postcards for the Baby Boomers: 9/11, the Challenger disaster, the moon landing, MLK, and JFK. (I specifically excluded the Carlton Fisk homer, but only just barely, and also considered the OJ trial and Diana accident.)
I also wondered about (what I’ll call) the “Stan Musial problem,” which Bill James offered up in his marvelous Historical Baseball Abstract (1986): “The image of Musial seems to be fading quickly. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to me that you hear much about him anymore, compared to such comparable stars as Mantle, Williams, Mays and DiMaggio, and to the extent that you do hear of him it doesn't seem that the image is very sharp, that anybody really knows what it was that made him different. He was never colorful, never much of an interview. He makes a better statue.”
Why does that happen, I wonder? Jim Thorpe was voted the greatest athlete of the first fifty years of the 20th century. Where’d he go? Mary Pickford was the most popular actress (and maybe best-known woman) in the world, auctioning off one of her curls for $15,000 to raise money during WWI. Where’d she go?
The Mexican-American War of 1846—ever hear of it? It’s the war that Winfield Scott taught Grant and Lee, Longstreet and Pickett how to fight, the war that saw at Veracruz the most dramatic amphibious landing before D-Day--not to mention the subsequent securing of the “Halls of Montezumas” in Mexico City. Long afterward, the son of Dwight Eisenhower would call Winfield Scott “the most capable soldier this country has ever produced.” Where did Scott go? For that matter, what happened to George Marshall (who raised an army of 7 million and was said to be the closest thing to George Washington that America produced in the 20th century)?
Ever since that “postcard” post, I’ve been on the prowl for the lost and found of history--and stumbled upon some fascinating examples. You'll like them. Coming up next.
0 Response to "More Historical Postcards: Found, Fading and Destroyed"
Post a Comment