THE NEWEST MEMORIAL

A correspondent from Scarborough, temporarily living in Washington, D.C., recently sent us the following letter:

I love to visit Washington’s memorials at night, when they’re quieter. More intimate. Just before midnight of the day it opened, I walked with friends to the new National World War II Memorial. Our initial view was through the trees, where shimmering floodlights suggested a flickering mirage lay on the other side. As we stepped into the clearing of the Mall, the mirage became real.

With its sweeping, sunken plaza, triumphal arches, bronze eagles, towering columns and gentle fountains, Washington’s newest monument honors the millions of Americans who served during World War II. It is physically imposing and expansive, like the war. On its flanks are two 43-foot Kershaw granite arches signifying the war’s Pacific and Atlantic theaters. Carved into the base of the Pacific Arch, I found familiar names: Leyte, Philippine Sea and Okinawa. These names belong to battles that I first learned of in conversations with my father.

At 17, he joined the Navy. A Depression-era farm boy from rural New York and self-described poor student, he quit school, joined the Navy and a force of millions, who changed the world. The memorial honors them all, including the more than 400,000 who perished. The monument’s Freedom Wall holds 4,000 of the war’s signature gold stars as a special tribute to them.

My dad didn’t die. He re-enlisted in the Navy, finished high school, explored the Antarctic, got married, had children, fought in another war, had another child, moved his family to Maine, and retired after 20 years, just shy of a third war. He went to college at the University of Maine on the GI bill, became a teacher and retired from a second career.

The life he ultimately led was the result of a choice he made in 1942 to risk his life, at a time when few choices were available. It may have begun as a call to duty, or even a naive quest for adventure, but it became a means to a career, an education, a life. That may be why he’s never viewed his service as anything heroic. But isn’t that what we’ve come to recognize as heroism? Ordinary people doing their best under extraordinary circumstances?

This weekend, I’ll bring my dad, now 78, to Washington to attend the dedication ceremonies for the World War II memorial and all the surrounding hoopla. But in the midnight heat and relative quiet of Washington, I reread the battle names. In my child’s eye, I saw my dad fighting that war as a man. But he was a boy. An ordinary boy made extraordinary by the times.