LIVING THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS. Donald E. Wilson

provided the examples and above all the faith, without which we would not be who we are. They were our fathers: Charles P. Wilson (Charlie), and James A. Watson, Jr., (Jim). So, the following pages, in effect, provide not just an autobiography but a seamless experiential history of six decades of American history as told through four lives enmeshed together in a voyage through the significant events of the twentieth century.

      Chapter 1: Charlie and Jim: Larger than Life

       The end is where we start from

       “Little Gidding”

       T.S Eliot 1

      No Twentieth Century country witnessed as many cultural, political, or scientific events as the United States. While Alleen and I were not part of the first three decades of that century, we were impacted enormously by the lives of two men of that era; our fathers Charles P. Wilson and James A. Watson, Jr. Both were powerful representatives of that vibrant century and thankfully passed their unshakable faith and influence, not only to us, but future generations.

      So, our story rightfully begins with theirs and the explosive historical event that ushered in the century.

      On a crisp autumn day, September 6, 1901, the twenty-sixth president of the United States, William McKinley accompanied by his wife Ida Saxton, traveled to Buffalo, New York, to attend the much anticipated Pan American Exposition. The Exposition theme was “Wonders of the new source of power: Electricity.” Upon his arrival at the Temple of Music where tours began, the popular president was greeted by a throng of excited visitors waiting in a long reception line. As he was busily shaking hands his aide was a bit uneasy and remarked his concern that the President did not have his usual bodyguard. McKinley’s response was, “No one would wish to hurt me.”

      As the reception line moved forward he seemed to be in an unusually jovial mood holding out his hand briefly to each person in the throng of well wishers. Suddenly a 28 year old Slavic anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, approached the receiving line with his left hand wrapped in a handkerchief, and as the President held out his hand the handkerchief dropped revealing a pistol, and before his Secret Service guards could react, fired twice. The first bullet bounced off McKinley’s vest, the second ripped through his chest. The President lingered eight days before he died from gangrene and infection. His final words were, “it is God’s way, His will, not ours, be done.” In a hastily conducted trial his assassin revealed that he was unhappy over treatment of Slavic miners in the coal strike of 1897. On October 29, in an ironic twist of fate, and after a very brief trial, Czolgosz, went to the electric chair in one of the early uses of “electricity.”

      On that same afternoon, the Vice President, Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt was vacationing at his home in Oyster Bay, New York. Upon hearing of the incident, he hurriedly took the overnight train to Washington, arriving there the next day, September 15, shortly after hearing that the President had died.

      Roosevelt’s sudden ascendancy to the White House was a real shock to the Washington Republican establishment, the political bosses in particular. While he was very popular with many Americans who praised him for his days as the national hero after his famous charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War, and as a successful term as New York Governor, Republican Party leaders had selected him as McKinley’s running mate, primarily as a means of preventing the likelihood of his becoming President. After all, the Vice President slot in the administration mirrored Vice President Garner’s statement in later years that “the job of vice president was not worth a bucket of warm spit!”

      Teddy’s brash personality and bull headedness along with his Laissez Faire approach to dealing with the upper business class was a sure way to end any political aspirations he might have, they thought! It is strange how American history has often pivoted around inconceivable circumstances.

      When Mark Hannah, a leading political boss received the word of McKinley’s death, he proclaimed: “Good God, that damn cowboy is President of the United States.” Roosevelt most certainly had a personality and temperament in sharp contrast to any previous president. But, his comical looks and high pitched voice together with his toothy grin belied a very keen determined personality, and from the day after he took the presidential oath he exhibited a very powerful and forceful intellect. It would not be long before his plans for the country would ring forth from his “bully pulpit,” in such a dramatic manner, that even his harshest critics would take notice. In contrast to the early views Theodore Roosevelt was destined to become one of the most popular and powerful presidents in the nation’s history. Indeed, many historians would credit him as being the personification of the dynamic twentieth century about to unfold.

      Between Roosevelt’s ascendancy to the nation’s highest office and our recovery from the Spanish American War, America had indeed left one world and entered another. In 1901 a foreign diplomat in Washington put it very well when he remarked, “I have seen two Americas, one before the Spanish American war and another since.”

      David Shi and George Tindal in their book, “America” wrote, “The United States entered the Twentieth Century in a state of flux. Old truths and beliefs clashed with unsettling and scientific discoveries and social practices.” They attributed those dramatic changes to the status quo of the 1800’s. “Scientific discoveries and social practices along with Darwinism and existence of God were debated along with dangers of the jazz age, and the government’s efforts to prohibit alcoholic beverages.”

      Among the many changes was the emergence of a cultural revolution, and a new generation of children who were not only its recipients but the backbone of the changing world. Like Roosevelt, they were the ones who carved out a very special place in the dynamic history of the new age, and in fact they were to become the face of America for the next half century.

      They were that special generation who would both enjoy the prosperity of the 1920s only to face and suffer in the terrible economic collapse history was to label the “great depression.”

      But, those young men would also be at the forefront of that vast number of American’s men who would see the nation through Depression, World War Two, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts that followed. Two of those men were our fathers, without whom this autobiography would not be written.

      Our Fathers

      Just nineteen days following Roosevelt’s inauguration on October 5^th Alleen’s father was born in the Portland section of Louisville Kentucky. Nine months later on July 7, 1902, my father entered the world in the mountain town of Pineville Kentucky; two men from distinctly different environments destined to take their places among Kentucky’s true giants, and legends.

      Even before we were born our father’s witnessed, not only the many uses of electricity, but mankind’s first successful flight in a gasoline powered lighter than air craft, Henry Ford’s first Model T Ford, Einstein’s “Theory of Relatively,” and the first silent movies, followed closely by talkies and many other marvels of American ingenuity. The country was on the verge literally of becoming the greatest scientific and industrial power in the world.

      Our father’s also witnessed the vast changes in our day to day culture that fostered prohibition, speak easies, short skirts, and a vast new genre in music called jazz, that by mid-century was in itself a cultural revolution. And perhaps in one of the most dramatic changes to impact the American people they witnessed the unprecedented shrinkage of the world. The westward expansion of the past century was a thing of the past as the horse gave way to the automobile, leading to travel from shore to shore. By mid-century the airplane made the entire world accessible, and our dads would live to see the first man travel in space. Such scientific marvels as television and transatlantic communications added to that shrinking world. No nation in history could come close to matching the progress the United States made in their life time.

      While Charlie and Jim were very much alike in character, determination to succeed, love of country, love of families, and most significantly love of God, their early lives were poles apart.

      First, in the foothills of Appalachia was my father, Charles P. Wilson.