“Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” - President John F. Kennedy
Jim, I wrote and erased about 500 words of memories in this red box after reading your article. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war defined my childhood and adolescence as my father was a career Navy officer. I need to write something for my children about my thoughts and memories and spare you and your readers. But, thank you for evoking memories and emotions….it’s your job of course, as a writer, and this time you nailed it straight on.
Jim, this is a beautiful, if disturbing, piece. We went to Bratislava yesterday, where outside of the city center and the immediate periphery, the pall of the Soviet era is still in plain sight. Three-hundred miles away - the Ukrainian border. Slovakia is providing shelter to many who fleeing the Russian barbarity and all around we saw signs of solidarity with the Urkanian cause.
Jim, excellent commentary. Of all places to be during the Cuban missile crisis... I was an elementary school kid living at Offutt Air Force Base, outside Omaha... no more than 5 miles from the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. (SAC) Across the street from our house on Nelson Drive, warplanes regularly parked. (I recall one of them was a delta-winged British Vulcan bomber) Halfway between our home and the SAC Hq building, on a street we called “Generals’ Row” was the four-story house of a guy named Thomas Power, the Commander of SAC. Day or night, if you drove by it, an armed guard stood on the porch. On his hip: a pearl handled revolver, on his head: a blue beret signifying him as a member of the “Elite Guard.” General Power and the men I called neighbors… fathers of my friends, regularly selected the targets of every nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. Their war plan was called the “Single Integrated Operational Plan” or “SIOP.” Despite the likelihood of our likely annihilation in the opening moments of any nuclear exchange, in school, we too practiced those fruitless “duck and cover drills” and learned to avert our eyes from any light that might come from an atomic blast. What a world. Sadly, a half century after John Steinbeck’s death, his words still apply: “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” The only joy I get from this memory is that I survived… we survived. I pray our grandchildren can make the same statement about us… and now.
Jim, I wrote and erased about 500 words of memories in this red box after reading your article. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam war defined my childhood and adolescence as my father was a career Navy officer. I need to write something for my children about my thoughts and memories and spare you and your readers. But, thank you for evoking memories and emotions….it’s your job of course, as a writer, and this time you nailed it straight on.
With Ukraine, we are presented with the most terrible choices I've ever witnessed in my life. The right choice could be the wrong choice.
Jim, this is a beautiful, if disturbing, piece. We went to Bratislava yesterday, where outside of the city center and the immediate periphery, the pall of the Soviet era is still in plain sight. Three-hundred miles away - the Ukrainian border. Slovakia is providing shelter to many who fleeing the Russian barbarity and all around we saw signs of solidarity with the Urkanian cause.
Jim, excellent commentary. Of all places to be during the Cuban missile crisis... I was an elementary school kid living at Offutt Air Force Base, outside Omaha... no more than 5 miles from the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. (SAC) Across the street from our house on Nelson Drive, warplanes regularly parked. (I recall one of them was a delta-winged British Vulcan bomber) Halfway between our home and the SAC Hq building, on a street we called “Generals’ Row” was the four-story house of a guy named Thomas Power, the Commander of SAC. Day or night, if you drove by it, an armed guard stood on the porch. On his hip: a pearl handled revolver, on his head: a blue beret signifying him as a member of the “Elite Guard.” General Power and the men I called neighbors… fathers of my friends, regularly selected the targets of every nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. Their war plan was called the “Single Integrated Operational Plan” or “SIOP.” Despite the likelihood of our likely annihilation in the opening moments of any nuclear exchange, in school, we too practiced those fruitless “duck and cover drills” and learned to avert our eyes from any light that might come from an atomic blast. What a world. Sadly, a half century after John Steinbeck’s death, his words still apply: “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” The only joy I get from this memory is that I survived… we survived. I pray our grandchildren can make the same statement about us… and now.