Edward Humes - Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream
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- Book:Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream
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Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream: summary, description and annotation
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Extraordinary stories of ordinary men and women whose lives were changed forever by landmark legislationand how they went on to change the country.
Inspiring war stories are familiar. But what about after-the-war stories? From a Pulitzer Prizewinning author, Over Here is the Greatest Generations after-the-war storyvivid portraits of how the original G.I. Bill empowered an entire generation and reinvented the nation. The G.I. Bill opened college education to the masses, transformed America from a nation of renters into a nation of homeowners, and enabled an era of prosperity never before seen in the world. Doctors, teachers, engineers, researchers, and Nobel Prize winners who had never considered college an option rewrote the American Dream thanks to this most visionary legislation.
Vivid . . . Deeply moving, alive with the thrill of people from modest backgrounds discovering that the opportunities available to them were far greater than anything they had dreamed of. Los Angeles Times
Poignant . . . The human dramas scattered throughout the narrative are irresistible. The Denver Post
Fascinating . . . The books statistics are eye-opening, but its the numerous personal vignettes that bring this account to life. . . . At its best, these passages are reminiscent of Studs Terkels Depression-era and World War II oral histories. The Plain Dealer
Inspiring war stories are familiar. But what about after-the-war stories? From a Pulitzer Prizewinning author, Over Here is the Greatest Generations after-the-war storyvivid portraits of how the original G.I. Bill empowered an entire generation and reinvented the nation. The G.I. Bill opened college education to the masses, transformed America from a nation of renters into a nation of homeowners, and enabled an era of prosperity never before seen in the world. Doctors, teachers, engineers, researchers, and Nobel Prize winners who had never considered college an option rewrote the American Dream thanks to this most visionary legislation.
Vivid . . . Deeply moving, alive with the thrill of people from modest backgrounds discovering that the opportunities available to them were far greater than anything they had dreamed of. Los Angeles Times
Poignant . . . The human dramas scattered throughout the narrative are irresistible. The Denver Post
Fascinating . . . The books statistics are eye-opening, but its the numerous personal vignettes that bring this account to life. . . . At its best, these passages are reminiscent of Studs Terkels Depression-era and World War II oral histories. The Plain Dealer
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Over Here
How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream
Edward Humes
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright 2006 by Edward Humes
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, email
First Diversion Books edition March 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-257-4
ISBN: 978-1-62681-257-4
This book is dedicated to the memories of Edward Aloyisious Humes and Shirley Humes, children of the Depression, the War, and the G.I. Bill.
Contents
Troop Movement Unlike Any Other
The Greatest Regeneration: The Accidental Remaking of America
Cold Wars, Hot Rockets, a New American Dream
Investing in the Future: Bill Thomas and the Rise of Suburbia
Bill and Vivian Kingsley: G.I. Tech
Out of the Blue: Medical Miracles
Nixon and Kennedy, Bonnie and Clyde: The G.I. Bill and the Arts
Gunnery Mates and Other Invisible Veterans: Women and the G.I. Bill that Wasnt
Monte Poseys War: Race and the G.I. Bill
Whats inside? Leaders and the G.I. Bill
Kilroys Not Here: The Future and the G.I. Bill
Prologue
Troop Movement Unlike Any Other
Allan Howerton had never seen anything like itwhich was saying a lot.
He had swapped a job hustling White Castle burgers on the graveyard shift in Rahway, New Jersey, for action in six bloody, crucial battles in France and Germany, surviving some of World War IIs most deadly months on the ground. By his own calculation, he was one of only eighteen out of 570 infantrymen in his company to make it through every one of those battles without being wounded, captured, or killedwhich meant, he would later joke, he was either good, lucky, or foolish. Or a bit of all three.
Still, Howerton felt nothing he had faced beforenot the deadly and constant thudding of artillery, not the endless slogging through the mud of Roer and Rhine, not even the sight of death and hope and fear mingling on the faces of enemy and friend alike along the Siegfried Linehad prepared him for this latest massing of men, for this unprecedented mission with no guarantees.
Howerton stood on a packed tramcar, thick with the smell of Winston and Pall Mall and the familiar waiting sounds of shuffling, coughing, murmuring. The troops had been gathering for weeks, arriving first by the dozens, then the hundreds, and, finally, they began moving in by the thousands. Now they streamed toward the city and headed for the high ground, an emerald hilltop near the urban core with a commanding view and easy access by road and railidyllic, quiet, underpopulated, waiting to be taken.
And so the most remarkable, least predictable action of World War II began to play out, a movement of more Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Corps forces than has ever been attempted before or since. Howertons was just one location in a worldwide endeavora coordinated effort of such magnitude that it would shape the future of America and the world in a way that would eclipse almost every battle of the war, even the Normandy landing and the decimation of Hiroshima. The men in Washington who had conceived this audacious plan virtually as an afterthought, almost killing it a half-dozen times before finally setting it in motion shortly after D-Day, had in no way foreseen what this moment would look likenor did they envision the long reach of its impact, still resonating to this day. In time, all America would feel its effects, from city to suburb to farm, from classroom to boardroom, doctors office to Oval Officean unintended juggernaut.
The tram doors creaked open and the men rushed into the thin morning sunlight, freed from the coffinlike confines of the old trolley. Howerton, his thick brow knitted in momentary confusion, struggled in the jostling crowd to get his bearings on this unfamiliar turf, this grassy knoll with its old brick and granite buildings stretching out before him, gnarled trees, singed by autumn, obscuring the horizon. Then he heard someone say, This way, and Howerton turned and saw the sign pointing to their objective:
UNIVERSITY OF DENVER : OFFICE OF THE REGISTRAR
He took a deep breath and headed off to sign up for his freshman classes, a nervous eagerness roiling his stomach, a far different unease from the sort he came to know during his time in war-torn Germany. The fears no longer involved bullets and bleeding and death, but professors and textbooks and midtermsand contemplation of a future that was no longer simply about surviving to see the next day, but about envisioning a new century, building a career, a life, a country.
On that creaky trolley car in Denver, in a moment replayed in cities and towns throughout the nation, the age of the G.I. had drawn to an end. And the age of the G.I. Bill had just begun.
Chapter 1
The Greatest Regeneration: The Accidental Remaking of America
Although he had no idea at the time, Allan Howertons journey to Denver began two years earlier, on January 11, 1944, when two very distinct road maps to postwar America landed on Congresss doorstep.
One vision for winning the peace came wrapped in the pomp and ritual of the presidents annual State of the Union address. The other was scrawled by lobbyists a mile from the Capitol, on hotel stationery, then hastily typed up for public consumption.
One represented nothing less than President Franklin Delano Roosevelts plan to expand the Founding Fathers original vision of a just America: giving every citizen the right to a rewarding job, a living wage, a decent home, health care, education, and a pensionnot as opportunities, not as privileges, not as goods to which everyone (who could afford them) had access, but rights, guaranteed to every American, from cradle to grave. He called it a Second Bill of Rights.
The other plan, courtesy of the eras most powerful veterans organization, the American Legion, advanced a more modest goal, or so it seemed: to compensate the servicemen of World War II for their lost time and opportunities, offering 16 million veterans a small array of government-subsidized loans, unemployment benefits, and a year of school or technical training for those whose educations had been interrupted by the draft or enlistment. The Legion called this a Bill of Rights for G.I. Joe and Jane.
The first plan promised to reinvent America after the war.
The second offered to put things back to where they were before the war.
As it turned out, neither plans promises could be kept. FDR never got the chance to remake America. Instead, the G.I. Bill did.
This was not by grand design, but quite by accident, as much a creation of petty partisans as of political visionaries. Yet the forces set in motion that day in January 1944 would power an unprecedented and far-reaching transformationof education, of cities and a new suburbia, of the social, cultural, and physical geography of America, of science, medicine, and the arts. And just as importantly, the blandly and bureaucratically named Servicemens Readjustment Act of 1944, forever remembered as the G.I. Bill of Rights, would alter both the aspirations and the expectations of all Americans, veterans and nonveterans alike.
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