TRAVERSE CITY -- Two weeks ago, one of my college students at Wayne State University asked me if I was watching "The War," Ken Burns' magnificent documentary on World War II.
"Yes," I told her.
She had watched one of the installments with her grandfather.
"That all really happened," she said, partly to herself. "I never knew all that really happened."
"Was your grandfather in the war?" I asked her.
"No, but another one was."
"Did he talk about what he did, what he saw?"
No, she said, he never had.
Well, I told her, "the odds are that he was a hero."
In my experience as a reporter, I've found that heroes mostly don't talk about it. Not unless they trust you, and you ask.
Last weekend, I had dinner with two of the people I admire most -- former Gov. William Milliken and his wife, Helen. I had known the governor was in the Army Air Corps, and thought I vaguely remembered that he had been wounded.
But that had never come up, as far as I knew, in any of his campaigns. If you are too young to remember, Milliken wasn't the kind of politician who indulged in military bluster. I doubt if he ever thought of campaigning as "the fighting waist gunner." (If anyone had suggested that, he might have shuddered.)
Were you ever wounded? I asked.
"Well, yes, more than once."
The Ken Burns series said that bomber crews had to serve 35 missions before being rotated home. But in Italy, it was 50 missions.
The future governor was shot down once and had to parachute out. Another plane made a crash landing within a mile of enemy lines, and another bomber's landing gear collapsed on the runway, sending live bombs smashing onto the concrete.
On another occasion, he had just returned to duty after taking anti-aircraft fire in the stomach. On the second mission, his radio operator was shot in the shoulder. Milliken laid on the floor next to him, pressed his hand to the wound and kept it there for more than three hours in the freezing, 30-below temperatures, till the blood and the wound and the young waist gunner's hand pretty much froze.
I looked at Helen Milliken, his wife. They had been married almost immediately after he got back in 1945.
"I never knew any of that," she said. "He never talked about the war till he was 80."
"Well, you couldn't write about it at the time," the governor said. "And afterwards ..."
I thought I knew what he meant. Most men just wanted to get on with their lives, to leave that time of horror behind.
Two years ago, he told Dave Dempsey, his biographer, that when he was flying missions, "I would say to myself, if I can only survive this, I will not ever complain about anything, nor fear anything, nor turn away from anything."
Sixteen million Americans served in World War II, including men from every town in Michigan and Ohio. Most are gone. The remaining ones are dying at the rate of more than a thousand a day.
And here's a last mission I wish the survivors would undertake:
Tell us about what you did. Tell your friends and especially your family members; the Ken Burns series should be a good takeoff point to get things moving. Your family needs to know that part of you.
You really did help save the world once. We need to know about that. Young people don't know anything about it. They've asked me if "World War II was a bigger deal than Iraq."
Well, yes, a bit.
Michigan-on-the-rocks update
Did you think the budget crisis was over? Did you think the package of tax increases the legislature passed in the wee hours Oct. 1 balanced the budget?
Ho ho. Not even close. Granted, that was a large part of the solution -- but all that really did was persuade the governor to sign a "continuation budget" to allow the state to operate for 30 days before facing another government shutdown. To really balance the books, the lawmakers need to make $435 million in further budget cuts.
Yet the clock is rapidly running out, and the lawmakers haven't agreed on what to cut yet. If they don't, the state will be on track to have another, perhaps more serious government shutdown on Halloween, which may seem curiously appropriate.
And speaking of appropriate: Michigan Speaker of the House Andy Dillon removed State Rep. David Agema (R-Grandville) from the House Appropriations Committee. Why? During the crucial budget debate last month, Agema thought it was more important to go hunt wild sheep in Siberia. His defense: He had been planning the trip for three years and would have lost money.
Why is this man in the Legislature?
Contact Jack Lessenberry at Bucca@aol.com or write to him at 189 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202
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