A Helluva Book

As part of an ongoing project to downsize our cluttered abode, I recently confronted several over-stuffed bookcases with the determination to get rid of at least a few armloads of books. It would require some tough decisions. I’d have to admit that I hadn’t looked at certain titles in years – had even lost interest in them – and would likely never open them again. Not easy admissions for me to make.

I’ve confronted this before, and with a similar determination. And I’ve followed through. I almost always regret it.

This time, as the gotta go pile grew, I came across a copy of Flags Of Our Fathers. I’d forgotten I had it, but do have a recollection of my late father (d. 2016) giving it to me some years back.

I opened it to the flyleaf to see whether he’d inscribed it, as he often used to do. No – but I did find an envelope. Inside it was a brief, undated letter from him that I’d totally forgotten about.

My dad was too young to have served in World War II, yet thought of himself part of the so-called “greatest generation.” He loved Flags Of Our Fathers – and considered it, as he wrote to me, a helluva book.

“It has a meaning for every one of us, I think,” he said. “Not just for war veterans. But for all of us. I want you to have it because of a number of things. First because that time is an important part of me...”

My immediate reaction: skepticism, quite frankly. I don’t know much about Flags Of Our Fathers. It has something to do with Iwo Jima, and that iconic flag-raising picture. I suspect a faux patriotic pulse; that it’s faintly (or not so faintly) jingoistic and rabidly macho, beckoning to an America that never was.

Whatever triumphs resulted from the sacrifice of these flagraisers, and the hundreds of thousands they symbolize, is threatened by the same elitist malignancies that caused World War Two, and today is poised to topple what passes for our democracy.

Or maybe I’m being too harsh. Wouldn’t be the first time.

That brief letter ends with, “I love you, son. Dad.”

He had me with hello.