Let me tell you what I wish I’d known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? – Lin-Manuel Miranda[1]
Continuing our LOTRW oral-history thread. Just outside DC here, my senior-living community occupies a dozen or so large buildings, spread over 56 acres. The buildings look separate but are connected by indoor walkways. The residents total nearly 2000. I’m now in my early 80’s; that makes me one of the younger ones; the average age might be closer to 90 years.
That adds up to some 180,000 years of life histories under one roof.
Nearly everyone eats at least one meal a day at one of several big community dining rooms and a comparable number of small eateries dotting the premises. This means a lot of meals with strangers whom you’re meeting for the first time. With tables-for-four, that turns most dinners into four intermingled oral history interviews.
This works out to something like 1000 oral history interviews every evening.
Of course, they aren’t archived; they’re perishable. And given the demographic, a cynic might expect that much of these are medical histories. There is some of that. But remember that this is DC. A number of the residents are retired military, spanning every service and every rank. A number are former government workers. They’ve seen some history, and they’ve made some. They have stories to tell.
An pertinent example. Early in 2024 I sat down to dinner with a guy here who turned out to be interested in weather – as in, making daily reports to CoCoRaHS from instruments on his balcony.
Putting aside issues on the representativeness of his site, that’s pretty serious. Anyway, he said he knew two other meteorologists living here. One thing led to another, and he gathered the four of us for dinner (along with his wife and mine – patient souls!). One was a retired NWS senior forecaster who’d gotten a masters degree of from MIT in 1958 – Andrew James Wagner, who was/is also a lay church leader, including a one-year stint as an adjunct professor of New Testament Greek at a local seminar.
The other was Elizabeth (Libby) Haynes, recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal in 2014, along with something like 200,000 other members of the Civil Air Patrol, in belated recognition for their efforts in submarine hunting (and some kills) during World War II (think of this as analogous to the gaggle of geoscientists who received the Nobel Peace Prize for their contributions to the IPCC). The state of Virginia piled on with its own commendation for Libby in 2017.
Libby’s story was fascinating. Picture a young woman graduating from high school on the eve of World War II, enlisting so that she could be trained as a nurse in 2.5 years versus four (military nurses were allowed to skip pediatrics and geriatrics). A young woman who not only learned to fly but managed to buy her own plane. Who then joined the Air Force and applied for and worked a stint as a secretary at Bolling AFB in order to position herself for a chance to study meteorology at MIT. Who then was the only woman in her 24-member Air Force group sent to MIT for training in the 1950’s. Who by virtue of her one week of seniority on the others was put in command of that group. Who served as a meteorologist in US air force bases in Canada… well, you get the idea.
A natural subject for an oral-history interviewer, right? And as good fortune would have it, an AMS Summer Policy Colloquium alum, Kristine Harper, a former Navy meteorologist, who got a Ph.D in history (check out the book Meteorology by the Numbers: the Genesis of Modern Meteorology, based on her thesis), though now working in Denmark, was able to swing by and interview Libby in September[2].
At the age of 100 years give or take, Libby has told her story.
Who tells your story is an issue for the famous as well as the obscure. Take Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton helped make the United States what it is today. One of the Founding Fathers, he served in the Revolutionary War, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, co-authored the Federalist Papers with John Jay and James Madison, and served as first Secretary of the Treasury. His vision for a strong American economy and a sound financial system probably contributed as much as anyone to the strong position of the United States in the world today, despite the fact that we total only some four percent of the world’s population. Wow! What a cv!
Since 1928 his face has been on the ten-dollar bill – though in today’s cashless society that familiarity will soon fade into oblivion. School children probably still hear his name at some point in their courses, but his role has been given minimal coverage compared with others of the time – Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin et al. If Hamilton has been rescued temporarily from this obscurity, it is largely because of Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography. And that biography would not have worked such magic had it not first captured the imagination of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who turned it into one of the greatest stage musicals (and movie) of all time. As the biography and the musical make clear, Hamilton, coming to the mainland from the West Indies as a child born out of wedlock was something of an outlier among the Founding Fathers, belonging neither to the group of Virginia plantation owners or the New England faction. After their presidencies, Jefferson and Adams had decades to tell and re-tell their own stories and versions of the Revolutionary War – and share their negative views of Hamilton. By then, Hamilton was long-dead, his life abruptly and violently cut short by his duel with Aaron Burr. Telling his story fell upon his wife Eliza.
Miranda captures this in an extraordinary way in the musical’s remarkably somber and deeply moving closing number. You can view and listen to a brief video here. I’ve put the full lyrics in a footnote[3].
The important question for you and me is this: who tells our stories? More in the next post.
[1]Lyrics from the close of the musical Hamilton; a rather somber finale as these things go.
[2] Libby and Kris allowed me to sit in the room during the interview. What a privilege! Unsure where the archival of that interview stands, but am hoping that if not accessible already, it will be soon.
[3]Let me tell you what I wish I’d known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
President Jefferson
I’ll give him this, his financial system is a work of genius
I couldn’t undo it if I tried
And I’ve tried
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
President Madison
He took our country from bankruptcy to prosperity
I hate to admit it
But he doesn’t get enough credit for all the credit he gave us
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story
Every other founding fathers’ story gets told
Every other founding father gets to grow old
And when you’re gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?
Who tells your story?
Who tells your story?
I put myself back in the narrative
(Eliza)
I stop wasting time on tears
I live another 50 years
It’s not enough (Eliza)
I interview every soldier who fought by your side
(She tells our story)
I try to make sense of your thousands of pages of writings
You really do write like you’re running out of time
I rely on Angelica
While she’s alive, we tell your story
She is buried in Trinity Church near you
When I needed her most, she was right on time
And I’m still not through
I ask myself, what would you do if you had more time
The Lord, in his kindness
He gives me what you always wanted
He gives me more time
I raise funds in D.C. for the Washington Monument
(She tells my story)
I speak out against slavery
You could have done so much more if you only had time
And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell your story?
Oh, can I show you what I’m proudest of?
(The orphanage)
I established the first private orphanage in New York City
(The orphanage)
I help to raise hundreds of children
I get to see them growing up
(The orphanage)
In their eyes I see you, Alexander
I see you every time
And when my time is up
Have I done enough?
Will they tell your story?
Oh, I can’t wait to see you again
It’s only a matter of time
Will they tell your story? (Time)
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? (Time)
Will they tell your story? (Time)
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?