JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

On the second Friday of each month, a group that calls itself the

Orange County Freedom Committee meets in the Costa Mesa Historical

Society building. History is not an abstract subject at these meetings.

It is flesh and blood and graphic memory.

But the members of this group don’t just talk about reaching out to

young people with living history. They do it -- by providing speakers who

will offer firsthand insights into World War II, as well as the Korean

and Vietnam wars, for students at every grade level in our local schools.

The list of speakers is impressive. On the last Pearl Harbor Day, for

example, five members of the Freedom Committee shared their experiences

with several hundred eighth-graders at Corona del Mar High School. The

panelists -- all from World War II -- included a night fighter Air Force

pilot (Bud Anderson), a Pearl Harbor Navy survivor (former Costa Mesa

Mayor Jack Hammett), a combat engineer wounded in the Battle of the Bulge

(David Lester), a paratrooper who dropped into Normandy on D-Day and was

captured by the Germans (Mal Phillips) and an Eisenhower staff member

deeply involved in the planning of the Normandy invasion (Gene Robens).

Among the other members -- both active and advisory -- are two Medal

of Honor winners (William Barber and Walter Ehlers) and several dozen

other veterans from three wars -- plus a passel of public officials who

publicly express support for the work of this group.

It got started, almost by accident, when Henry Segerstrom, responding

to word from friends in Washington, called Jack Hammett in 1991 to

suggest that Costa Mesa formally join the activities taking place all

across the country to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of World War II.

That hit Hammett as a good idea, so he formed a committee to plan local

commemorative events.

When it was disbanded in 1995, Hammett recalls: “We hesitated and

asked ourselves what more we might do with this group. And it struck us

that we could keep it alive to inform kids on an ongoing basis about

World War II as a kind of adjunct to local history teachers.’

Since then, Hammett -- who keeps careful records of such matters --

says Freedom Committee speakers have appeared before more than 5,000

local students to discuss a variety of subjects, ranging from the attack

on Pearl Harbor to the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

Politics are off limits in the workings of the Freedom Committee --

which I realized was probably a good thing for me after I ran into one of

my old letter-writing adversaries and listened to several unfriendly

offhand references to “liberals” at the meeting I attended.

But the apolitical policy of the Freedom Committee demonstrates a fact

of philosophical life that has been impressed on me many times, in many

ways: that there is probably no bond greater than the shared bond of

military service, especially and emphatically in time of war. It crosses

political party lines and just about every other line laid down by human

beings.

I had a dramatic example of that when I first enrolled at the

University of Missouri in 1939. My uncle -- who was then the state

commander of the Missouri American Legion -- had served in France in

World War I with U.S. Sen. Harry Truman. Although politically they were

light years apart, when I got into some trouble at the university, my

uncle asked Truman to help me, and he did -- quickly and generously. I

later had a chance to thank him in person when my uncle appointed me to

the honor guard that met Truman and Winston Churchill in Jefferson City

when Churchill came to Missouri to deliver his “iron curtain” speech.

That there are matters more important than politics is captured well

in the Freedom Committee’s mission statement, which says, in part: “Our

way of life, our form of government, did not just happen. It was

conceived out of struggle. . . . We must preserve our legacy, both to

honor those who have made the supreme sacrifice on our behalf as well as

to guard it for ourselves and posterity. It must not be taken for

granted.”

This is the message they carry to our students through their own

personal experiences. And from what I heard, the kids are not only deeply

involved but also ask good and thoughtful questions. They want to hear

the battle experiences first. But then they want to know details. What

part did the weather play in deciding the date of the Normandy landings?

Why were the Germans initially successful in the Battle of the Bulge? How

much pressure did Stalin exert to open a second front? These were all

questions asked by the eighth-graders on Pearl Harbor Day.

They remind me of the questions I was never able to ask my

grandfather, who was a colonel in Sherman’s army during the Civil War and

was wounded in the battle for Atlanta. He died before I was born, but I

pressed my father and uncles for details about him. And I still remember

vividly the handful of Civil War veterans hobbling at the front of the

Memorial Day parades when I was very small.

In not too many years, the men and women who fought World War II will

also be reduced to a handful. Freedom Committee members are available,

even anxious, to pass the history they lived along to the young people of

today while it is still possible. You can call or fax them at (949)

737-1453.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.