Three of the world’s five oldest people live in the United States. Gertrude Weaver, of Arkansas, is 116, and Jeralean Talley, of Michigan, and Susanna Mushatt Jones, of New York, both are 115. All were born before the turn of the 20th century. Oh, the stories they could tell – and the stories that will be lost when they die.
Joe Langdell, who died earlier this month at the age of 100 years, three months and 24 days, was the last surviving officer on the USS Arizona. He was off the ship when it was attacked. He remembered looking out his window to see Japanese planes, and, days later, being told to go out to the Arizona and supervise the recovery of all his shipmates’ bodies above the waterline.
“Took two days to do it,” said Langdell, choking up in an interview with the Appeal Democrat in Marysville, Calif. “Then I think about 30 years later, I went back to Punch Bowl National Cemetery, and looked at all those graves.”
Eight men from the USS Arizona remain alive. Only eight.
Chester Nez, the last of the original Navajo code talkers, died last June. After a childhood during which he was forced to attend boarding schools and punished for speaking Navajo, he was recruited from school to use that language in service to the United States. He didn’t tell his family about his decision to enlist, and he lied about his age to meet Marine Corps requirements. He fought at Guadalcanal, Guam and Peleliu.
Until 1968, he was forbidden to talk with anyone about the code. In 2001, he received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush.
That’s history – a different, rawer version than is written in history books. Such stories are more widely available now than ever before, thanks to the Internet.
The Internet, though, is an inefficient guardian of truth. Anyone can post anything, and inaccurate stories proliferate just as quickly as the truth. That problem isn’t limited to online information. This week, Brian Williams is in trouble for “misremembering” his role in moments relevant to the nation’s history, and his medium was the NBC Nightly News.
Americans need a yardstick by which to judge what they read and hear, and there is no better comparison than the collective stories of ordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives, and people whose ordinary lives have, with the passage of time, come to seem remarkable. Their memories can help correct and enrich the “official” record.
2015 isn’t unique; it just happens that now, the last remaining people from the 19th century are reaching the end of lives that took place over a time of rapid change. Many children born this year are likely to see the dawn of the 22nd century, and they’ll be better for hearing and understanding the lessons of those who came before.
History happens in every time and place – not just on 9/11, not just at Pearl Harbor – and its value is cumulative. Winter evenings provide a good opportunity to sit by the fire and talk to people who still remember, because they won’t always be with us. Woven together, their stories are our history.