Storytime: Remembering the newsreels in real life
That morning, my boss walked through the lobby and stopped, his eyes on the black-and-white newsreel playing on the television mounted in the corner of the bank where I worked.
“Do you know what today is?” Wendell asked with a tone in his voice that caught my attention.
I was a young wife and mother when Wendell Mustain hired me to work in the savings-and-loan a few blocks from my home. I knew nothing about banking — nothing about anything, really — but I was, and am, aware of the world around me.
Of course I knew what day it was.
“It’s Pearl Harbor Day,” I replied, hoping that was the answer he was seeking. I glanced up at the television screen, then back at Wendell where something about his distant eyes made me ask.
“What do you remember about that day?”
“Nothing was ever the same,” Wendell sighed, almost as if he was talking to himself.
He stayed in his thoughts, and I watched as he watched the TV screen where bombs were coming down and ships were blowing up. Finally, Wendell spoke again, his voice slow and low and full of words he never said. Pearl Harbor, he told me, changed the course of his life and the path of his generation.
War has a way of doing so.
With his voice growing rough, Wendell talked about his parents, brothers, and friends who rushed to support the war effort. That’s what Wendell did. He put aside his plans and joined the Army Air Corps, flying missions over Germany, destroying and disrupting their supply lines.
Wendell spoke of his mother and the worry she carried, the friends he lost and the lives that were changed.
“After Pearl Harbor, I wasn’t a boy anymore,” Wendell said, his eyes on the television mounted in the corner.
He went on to talk about the mood of the nation and the days after Dec. 7, 1941. He reminisced about the thick of the war and the world afterwards, and I almost believed that those were the best and worst days of his life.
When customers began arriving, some stopped and stood in the lobby to watch Pearl Harbor newsreels on the television; some walked past, never bothering to look up. That’s when Wendell looked down at me and said one more thing before he walked down the hall to his office.
“Someday, no one will remember Pearl Harbor.”
Those are the words I carried in my head as I boarded the boat that carried me across the water. I thought about Wendell as I stepped onto the USS Arizona Memorial and read the names carved there.
I stared out over the ocean, watched the bubbles rise and remembered my old boss and the impact of what happened here. I stood at the railing, gazed down into the water and felt the weight of history all around me.
I wiped away tears and watched others do the same, while another generation paced impatiently, earplugs in and focused on their screens, oblivious to what lay beneath them.
Wendell was right about remembering.
People’s memories shift and slide with the passing of time. Another war, another catastrophe, another tragedy replaces the one before it and history books and monuments are left to remind us. For me, it was an emotional day at Pearl Harbor, seeing in real life the place I see in newsreels one day a year.
It was an honor to be there and, in the stillness, I felt the greatness all around me, a monument to Wendell’s generation who stood up, showed up, and changed their lives and my future with their service and sacrifice. Standing along the railing and peering into the water below me, I said Wendell’s name and repeated what I told him that long ago day.
I will remember even after the newsreels stop.
You can reach Lorry at lorrysstorys@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Storytime: Remembering the newsreels in real life
