On this Veterans Day, I remember my dad

My dad was born the year Herbert Hoover (both from Iowa) was appointed Secretary of Commerce for Republican Presidents Warren G. Harding and then Calvin Coolidge (he was the Howard Lutnick of his time). In due course, President Hoover ushered in the Great Depression, and my grandfather moved his family to Detroit to find work in the auto industry, only to return home empty handed to work in Iowa’s coal mines. My dad graduated high school and turned a summer job of cleaning up in a slaughterhouse into a year-round job cleaning up in a slaughterhouse.

By the time my dad was old enough to serve, he and his best friend enlisted to fight fascism in World War II. He had good enough eyesight to serve in the Army Air Corps, where he flew—by himself—67 missions in Europe in a P-47 fighter. On his last mission, 81 years ago, he was shot down over northern Italy, was marched to Germany on a broken ankle, and served the last few months of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp. When he was finally liberated, he was down to about half his healthy body weight, had contracted pneumonia, and lived only because he got injections of penicillin in what became the first mass use of the patent-free drug to treat war injuries.

And here I am.

In my father’s memory, I fight fascism, too.

My dad, upon returning from the war, started a family, went to college and became a doctor, thanks to the GI Bill (he got a free education because he was a white male veteran). Like many other WWII veterans, my dad did not say much about his experience in the war, even when asked. Rather, he focussed on his present: his family and his patients, and doing what was right for both. He lived a good long life and made the same possible for those he cared for and loved.

I’ve always considered myself among the luckiest: Born in mid-twentieth century America, straight, white, and male in a suburban ZIP Code. I just want everyone to share in that privilege—a concept that should not be part of any truly political, economic, or social democracy—no matter the accidents of their birth or life. And to think, I almost wasn’t born.

In this election season, I can only image what my dad would be saying about my generation (and our progeny) voting in large enough numbers to elect politicians whose only fealty is to Trump and extreme wealth. May our generation’s children and grandchildren live to be proud of what we do—in the next two years—to save our democracy. Last week was a good start.

Marshall Mayer is an organizer in Montana who has worked to elect economic populists in presidential primaries, including Jessie Jackson, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.