A few years ago on a television program about Thomas Jefferson, the writer George Will said our country has a birthday we can name and celebrate. Americans know the date, the Fourth of July, as well as we know our own birthdays. Furthermore, we know exactly how the United States of America came about and why. Jefferson explained the reasons in the Declaration of Independence in language so eloquent and so simple that all of us can understand them and be lifted up by the very thought that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights no king or anyone else has reason to deny.
We know that our freedom was, from the very start, bought for us with a price. Men and women have fought and died for it over and over again throughout the short life of our nation. They are doing so today.
Every year around this time I go through my own Independence Day list in my mind. Had I been among the sweltering delegates in Independence Hall that summer, would I have been on the side of the angels on every issue? What if that one sick delegate had been well and right at the start, as Jefferson wanted, they could have made slavery illegal? I go through questions like that until I come to the big one: would I have been as brave as those men who signed the Declaration , knowing full well that doing so meant the horrible death of a traitor if they were caught by the English? John Hancock signed in such big letters!
This year, having recently been with the World War II veterans I wrote about in my last column and with many of my high school classmates, as we celebrated the life and grieved the death of our dear classmate Jim Wyatt, who lost both his legs in battle in Vietnam, I have been thinking deeply about the bravery of the men and women we ask to risk their lives for our freedom. This year, it is much more than a lofty ideal; it is stingingly real.
I’ve thought also about the hundreds of young Wabash College men who have gone to every United States was since its founding in 1832. Wabash men flocked to the Civil War. The beautiful plaque on the east side of Center Hall bears the names of 310 Wabash students and alumni who fought. The young men dressed in the dashing outfits of the Zouaves and joined the local company assembled by Isaac Elston. At the daily Chapel service, Wabash President Joseph Tuttle prayed for the student soldiers and their noble cause. Professors and their wives regularly wrote them.
During the First World War Wabash was temporary home to a chapter of the Students’ Army Training Corps, a program developed by the military to keep colleges open in the face of shrinking enrollment and to assure a steady flow of educated officers throughout the war. Where the Wabash Chapel now stands, there were two very large barracks built to house the soldiers. A fraternity house served as the military hospital. On its first day open six young soldiers showed up with a bad flue that had swept Europe and would soon sweet the Wabash campus. One hundred twenty-five future officers were cared for by women from the town who literally kept them alive so they could go to war.
Many of you know about the Navy V-12 Program that kept Wabash alive during World War II; some of you participated. Before it was set up, the campus was almost empty. After Pearl Harbor, neither students nor professors could enlist fast enough. The V-12 Program brought in hundreds of young officer candidates to be educated in the liberal arts and the art of war. The few professors left on campus, in the best Wabash spirit, were not at all deterred by the fact that they sometimes didn’t know much about what they were required to teach the V-12 students. The late Jack Charles once told me he taught himself Spanish from a dictionary, keeping a whole day ahead of his pupils. The classics professor also taught military history to V-12 students, apparently drawing on his knowledge of Caesar and Alexander the Great to give the soldiers grounding in military logistics.
Wabash men served honorably in Viet Nam, but on campus political views clashed. Policy was sharply debated, but Wabash, unlike most colleges, did not shut down or go up in smoke. The administration gave everyone the opportunity to express his opinion, and the campus stayed calm.
There are young Wabash soldiers in the Middle East right now. One of the finest athletes in College history was killed in an explosion in Afghanistan earlier this year. His professors, coaches, and friends are heartsick at the loss.
He was faithful to his country, as hundreds of Wabash men were before him. He was a Wabash hero, an American hero, who in his own way was brave enough to sign his name boldly on the Declaration of Independence, right beside John Hancock.
Cantrell is a senior writer for Wabash College's Public Affairs Department. She writes this column twice a month for The Paper of Montgomery County.