Bob Dole Was Young Once
Bob Dole was young once.
The death of former Senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole is getting a lot of attention today. By all accounts, he was a “good and decent” person, which once was the highest accolade a man or woman could hope for in this life, before fame and fortune corrupted so many of us.
You likely know the basics – lost the use of his right hand and arm fighting in World War II, and later helped lead the charge for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. He’d grown up in the tiny town of Russell, Kansas during the Great Depression, the kind of childhood that we believe builds character and toughness, and he was personally recruited to play basketball at the University of Kansas by Forrest “Phog” Allen, who was as famous in his day as UCLA’s John Wooden would later become. Then the war happened.
What I liked about Dole was that he was a Republican when this still meant a commitment to the rule of law and willingness to be part of the loyal opposition, not a sore loser. I think of him in the vein of Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in World War 2 and a two-time president in the 1950s. Not perfect, but decent and committed to upholding the law, not undermining it.
So much for the eulogizing. What strikes me most about Dole’s death at 98 is my awareness that he was a young man once. He was just 21 when he was injured in Italy during the war (I’m of a certain age where saying “the war” always meant World War 2, without any further annotation). Pretty much every male who was 21 then, whether from the United States or Canada or the United Kingdom, Russia, too, and even Germany itself, was under arms in those days. Many were younger, some were significantly older. Overall, more than 16,000,000 Americans served in Word War 2; 405,000 died and 671,000 were injured.
The great challenge for young men throughout history was always to go to war, and for women it was childbirth as the risk of death in labor was significant. Youth was not merely a precious thing, or the best time of your life. It was the most precarious, as well, not counting infant mortality, I suppose.
Today, we so often see our leaders only as older men and women, whether it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden, or Angela Merkel in Germany or Queen Elizabeth II. It’s too easy to think that’s what they are. Old. But they, too, were young once.
It’s said that people grow up quickly when in battle. Maybe so, but that doesn’t account for the high incidence of suicide and PTSD we know about in our veterans. Dole reportedly suffered from depression after his injuries, but adjusted and made significant contributions to the country in his long life. I have to think he’d rather have still had use of his right hand and arm, and the reality is lots of people put on a brave face in public while suffering in silence in their most private moments. There’s no way I can know his story with any degree of intimacy.
I only know this: Bob Dole was young once.