A different war, a different time

Peace was the buzzword of my childhood.

We always talked about putting an end to war in school, and it

seemed like my entire sixth-grade class had that tie-dyed Trapper

Keeper with the large peace sign on the front of it. Rings, necklaces

and anklets were decorated with the popular fashion symbol, and just

like beauty queens, we all listed world peace as one of our top

wishes.

It’s hard to imagine I have “seen” two wars in my life: the

Persian Gulf War and this War on Terrorism.

(If we are counting wars on abstract things, I have watched the

country continue to lose the War on Drugs, but that’s another

column.)

Anyway, as I was walking into the newsroom Thursday, I saw our

paper’s headline, “War feels far away,” and it captured exactly how I

felt about it all. Without a family member or close friend deployed

in any of these wars, they never really hit home. Sure, I watched the

patriot missiles explode all the scud missiles fired at our troops

during the Persian Gulf War, but as with everything else on

television, I felt very disconnected.

The closest I felt to this war was accompanying Costa Mesa Marine

Reservist Cass Spence and his family to Camp Pendleton to watch them

say goodbye as he shipped off to Kuwait, but still, I was technically

an outsider.

Mine is such a different sentiment from what I have heard from

local senior citizens. All of these sources have “wartime” stories

and remember the effects of World War II vividly. It was before

Vietnam, when war was collectively thought of as honorable, and young

men were itching to serve their country.

It was a time of extreme pride in the nation and its troops. And

although that war was also fought on foreign soil, Americans made

great efforts stateside to help in any way possible.

Longtime Costa Mesa Senior Center volunteer Mary Anne Bane, 68,

said she was 7 when World War II was declared. Bane said she

remembers the efforts she and her family members took to save

resources during wartime.

“I remember, as a child, we saved our chewing gum wrappers for the

foil, and the same with cigarette packs,” she said, not that she was

smoking at age 7, I’m sure. “We did the same with tin cans. We

smashed the cans, made the foil into little balls and took them all

to the recycling site.”

She remembers gathering around the radio every night to hear the

latest war news. Even during the Saturday matinees, which children

attended religiously for a nickel, there would be a weekly news

update before the show.

“They showed footage from Pearl Harbor and showed footage of the

bombings every week,” Bane said.

Schools also became involved in the war effort. Classes wrote

letters to the troops to “let them know we were thinking about them,”

Bane said. The girls would knit squares for blankets, and then their

teachers would crochet them together to send to the “boys overseas.”

“It got very cold over there, our teachers would tell us, and our

troops needed our support,” Bane said.

Bane commented on the differences between now and then and how

readily available war information is today. There was no TV, no live

broadcasts from a war-ridden areas during World War II, she said.

“There were only radios, newspapers and news reels back then,” she

said. “Now we get the news in no time flat,” Bane said.

Senior center regular Jack Hermance agreed.

“We would wait day to day to find out the latest,” he said.

It was more unifying then, he said, because there was a specific

time of the day when everyone was thinking about the American troops.

Now, with 24-hour news networks and the like, war news tends to

overwhelm people or to become background noise.

“It was helpful to be informed, yet it allowed us to live our

day-to-day lives,” Hermance said of the nightly radio broadcasts.

The war dramatically changed his senior year of high school and

required him to take an accelerated curriculum to finish before he

went to war. All the senior boys hurried their studies before their

draft card arrived.

“I knew I would be drafted, so I just finished the basics,” he

said. “My senior year, all we talked about was how we couldn’t wait

for the draft so we could enlist and do something about it. Now we

just sit, wait and watch.”

West Newport Beach resident Lucille Stafford said she remembers

the effects of the drafts, although she was exempt from being called

to the battlefield herself.

“We practically went to an all-girls school,” she said.

Her senior class was the last of the mandatory draftees, making

school dances and nights at the drive-through single-gender

activities.

“The girls certainly bonded,” she said.

In simpler times, it seems the nation felt more affected by its

actions overseas. When people generally trusted their government,

rallied behind their leaders and pledged blind allegiance to “the

cause” -- whatever it happened to be -- they were united. People

waited with baited breath to hear the latest war news and kept their

service men in all their prayers.

Compare that to now.

A large majority of my generation was raised by former hippies and

antiwar pundits. And even if they weren’t, we have all seen scandal

after political scandal, from Watergate to Monica Lewinsky. Americans

are more likely to trust a psychic than a politician.

We are all busy with our cell phones, pagers, e-mail, voice mail,

Internet, DSL, AYSO, HBO, SUVs, 401Ks, ATMs -- all ASAP! We don’t

have time to gather as families around the dinner table, much less

the radio for a presidential address.

Nor do we have to.

We can all just click on CNN at any time and see the latest

“breaking news,” which coincidentally happens to be the same stuff as

the previous hour’s “breaking news,” which further points to another

weak link in wartime credibility: the media.

I know we can’t go back to the 1940s, nor would I want to. I’m

happy to have the opportunity to learn about the differences between

then and now. It reminds me to take heed of the wisdom of older

generations and recognize the benefits of a simpler life. It reminds

me to turn off my TV, cell phone and computer and spend a quiet day

outside with my son.

I can also appreciate how far we have come and am grateful I live

in a time when people are not afraid to question the powers that be

and refuse to simply follow along blindly.

In this time of war, I may not ball up my gum wrappers or knit any

blankets, but I will continue to follow our president’s actions,

scrutinize his decisions, speak my mind and pray for our troops.

* LOLITA HARPER writes columns Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

and covers culture and the arts. She may be reached at (949) 574-4275

or by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.