The Peacemaker: Nelson Mandela, 1918 - 2013

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead. – Nelson Mandela

Rare is the person who can change the world. Politicians come and go. Leaders exist in all walks of life, from business and academia to the arts and sciences, but seldom are they transformational. Once in a great while the world is blessed with a leader who, at tremendous personal sacrifice, overcomes intractable barriers of prejudice, hatred and institutional resistance to reform a nation and transform the world. Nelson Mandela was one such leader, an uncommon man of noble and heroic achievements.

I was but a passive and distant witness to the end of apartheid. Only three years old when Mandela was imprisoned in 1962, I did not learn of Mandela’s story until nearly twenty years later as a first-year law student in Washington, D.C., where the Free Mandela movement had taken hold in the early 1980’s. Along with the rest of the world, I became increasingly aware of the evils of apartheid as daily vigils and protests were staged outside the South African embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, and as divestment and boycott efforts spread across America’s college campuses. I was a 30 year-old prosecutor when Mandela was released from prison in 1990, a 35 year-old father of two when Mandela was elected South Africa’s president in 1994. As with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the triumph of Camp David in 1978, I was blessed to have witnessed, if only from afar, such a special moment in history.

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I grew up in a nation that celebrates the lives and birthdays of freedom fighters and revolutionaries – Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, men who conspired to commit armed rebellion against a government they deemed oppressive to the natural rights of man. Although the moral clarity of Mandela’s cause to end apartheid in South Africa is now universally acknowledged, his resistance to racial oppression rendered him an outlaw for most of his adult life. Mandela was labeled a terrorist for trying, like Washington and Jefferson, to liberate his people from a system of oppression that every nation on earth now recognizes was unjust. 

Mandela was by nature non-violent, a life-long admirer of Gandhi; for years, he challenged apartheid and racism as a lawyer operating within the South African legal system. Only after South African police killed 69 innocent protestors during the Sharpeville massacre in 1961 did Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) resort to more radical measures, reluctantly concluding that non-violent resistance had proven ineffective against the entrenched system of racial oppression that was South Africa. I have my doubts that the ANC’s decision to support armed resistance was the right one. After all, history has proven time and again that non-violent resistance is, in the long run, far more effective in achieving the desired change. But Mandela was a reluctant warrior and would pay a heavy price for this change in tactics.

At his sentencing in 1964, Mandela freely acknowledged the intensity of his commitment to freedom and equality:

During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die for.

Banished to Robben Island, a brutally isolated prison in shark infested waters seven miles from the coast of Cape Town, for most of the next 27 years Mandela worked in labor camps and spent large blocks of time in solitary confinement. He was not allowed to communicate for many years with his family or the outside world. But through it all, he never lost sight of his vision for a better, more just world.

Even during his lowest moments, he recognized the humanity of his enemies.  “All men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency” he wrote in Long Walk to Freedom, “If their hearts are touched, they are capable of changing.” His life is a testament to the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the end, Mandela was a peacemaker, a gentle voice of reason at a time when the country could easily have disintegrated into bloody conflict and racial vengeance. “Whites are fellow South Africans,” Mandela said after his release from prison, “and we want them to feel safe and to know we appreciate the contribution that they have made toward the development of this country.” During his presidential campaign in 1994, Mandela emphasized the common interests of black and white South Africans. Despite their differences, he said, President F.W. de Klerk and he were “a shining example to the entire world of people drawn from different racial groups who have a common loyalty, a common love, to their common country.” On the day of his inauguration, Mandela declared South Africa a “rainbow nation,” his election “a common victory for justice, for peace, and for human dignity.”

Mandela understood that, while blacks and people of color were the most directly harmed by apartheid, all were victim of an unjust system of laws. Early in his presidency, he presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed to balance justice with forgiveness and help the country come to terms with its history. “The oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed,” he later wrote. “A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred; he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” Despite everything that Mandela had been through, his message remained one of hope.

[N]o one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. . . . Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

Mandela’s role as national conciliator was famously demonstrated during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, when he enlisted the Springboks, the country’s rugby team and a source of great pride for white South Africans, to help unify the country. The Springboks had only one black player (for many years it had been all-white) and the country’s black population was not emotionally invested in the team. But Mandela seized the opportunity to use sports as a means of healing the racial division in post-apartheid South Africa. Although some had wished to change the name and colors of the Springboks to something more reflective of black African identity, Mandela refused. “That is selfish thinking,” he said, “It does not serve the nation.” He believed it important to let white Afrikaners know that a black-led South Africa would not overturn all of the country’s cherished symbols. When Mandela donned a Springboks hat and jersey and joined the team on the field following their victory over New Zealand in the World Cup final, the stadium of 80,000 people, mostly Afrikaners, erupted in a spontaneous chant of “Nel-son! Nel-son!” Although merely symbolic, it was an important moment of unity and healing.

Like George Washington and other great leaders of history, Mandela understood that every action on his part would form a model for others to follow. Although he could have been President for life, he declined to seek a second term as South Africa’s president, an act of grace, wisdom, and foresight. He knew that, for South Africa to succeed as a free nation, it was important that the institution of democracy take precedence over any one man.

Mandela’s greatest and most lasting legacy will always be his role in dismantling the system of racial apartheid and transforming South Africa into a multiracial nation committed to the principle of one-person, one-vote. South Africa is not a perfect democracy and it continues to struggle with issues of poverty, crime, and inequality. But because of Mandela, South Africa became, with relatively little bloodshed or vengeance, an inclusive, market-based democracy and a nation of laws with an entrenched Bill of Rights which recognizes that all men and women are created equal.

For me, Mandela will forever remain a giant man of history, not because he was perfect, he was not, but because he advanced the cause of human freedom with dignity, grace, and love. Although his flame is extinguished, his goodness lives on.

My Failed Sabbatical

 Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. -- Albert Einstein

My favorite sculpture in the world is the one pictured above. It is Albert Einstein at his most accessible. Situated in an elm and holly grove on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., it is a warm, inviting portrait of a complex man in a simple pose. Einstein is wearing sandals and seated casually, his arm resting on the steps, a paper with mathematical equations resting on his knee as he ponders great thoughts or, perhaps, merely glances at a child who has caught his whimsical eye. It is Einstein as I imagine him later in life, wrinkled, disheveled, kind and contemplative. The artwork invites interaction; children feel compelled to climb onto Einstein’s lap as family photographs are taken. The statue seems to express Einstein’s notion, voiced in his later years, that “the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

I could have used Einstein’s wisdom this past year, when I was in need of inspiration. A year ago, as 2012 came to a close, I announced that I was taking a sabbatical from Ehlers on Everything. A year of contemplation, I hoped, would provide welcome relief from the demands of self-imposed deadlines, which had become more difficult to satisfy with the increasing demands of work and life.  Freed from the constraints of non-fiction, I anticipated an opportunity to write more creatively; a short story a month seemed like a reasonable and achievable goal. Writing fiction would free my imagination to expand into areas of untouched artistry, to explore the human experience on a deeper, more fundamental and psychological level. By year’s end, I would be refreshed, my writing renewed and energized. It was not to be.

I have plenty of excuses for having failed to write productively this past year. Andrea and I were married in October, followed by eight wonderful days in Italy. We attended a wedding in California in September; the Cardinals had an eventful year, reaching the World Series for the second time in three years. Work has kept me quite busy, and during the summer I published in book form my essays from the previous two years in Life Goes On: More Essays on Life, Baseball, and Things that Matter (Bookstand Publishing, 2013). I could invent other reasons and excuses for not authoring a single short story in 2013. But what I have concluded is that I am simply more comfortable writing essays of a personal, political, or religious nature. It is perhaps why I have yet to pen the great American novel.

Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” In this one small manner I am like Einstein (now that’s not something you can say every day). I, too, am passionately curious. About humankind’s quest for understanding; about people who have exemplified a life of courage and principle in the pursuit of justice and a better world; about life in its infinite variety and beauty, suffering and loss, striving and hope.

When I started this blog in the summer of 2009, self-imposed deadlines forced me to put my thoughts on paper and to stay engaged with the world of ideas, to search for answers to difficult questions, and to stay in the arena. To write about issues of political and social import, my love of baseball, reflective pieces on my life and children, questions about faith and our everlasting quest for understanding and meaning. It is the sort of writing I most like to do and the genre with which I am most at home. “Life is like riding a bicycle,” Einstein said.  “To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” So, I am returning to this small space of the universe where I can ponder, think, and write. I cannot promise an ever steady stream of brilliant essays and reflections, but I will try my best to remain relevant and fresh.

I will explore issues and ideas that move me and write about people who inspire me. I will struggle out-loud with faith and religion and continue to question my own beliefs, explore the beliefs of others, and dispute the certainty with which many believers and non-believers alike express themselves. I will write about personal and family issues and reflect on the mystery of life. I will write about baseball, about the memories and disappointments of youth and unfulfilled dreams; about my hopes and passions as a lifelong lover of the game, its sights and sounds; and about my admittedly zany and irrational loyalty to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman

I have come to recognize that writing, like reading, is how I pursue my continued education, my Ph.D. in life. This blog, along with my two books, Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart and Life Goes On, is my collective dissertation, a means to learn and grow, to challenge myself and my readers, to think, question, and when needed, advocate. Einstein said, "Wisdom is not the product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it." Nelson Mandela, who died this past month after 95 years of a life filled with purpose and meaning, said that "education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." I may not change the world, but I will use this space to continue my education; and to think and write about things that matter with a measure of idealism and hope.

The Renaissance of the Essay

Life Goes On: More Essays on Life, 

Baseball, and Things that Matter 

by Mark J. Ehlers 

From the author of Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart comes a new collection of personal essays on life, baseball, and things that matter. Part memoir and part reflection, Ehlers addresses life in all its dimensions; the passage of time and of unmet dreams, the conflicts of faith in a secular age, the redeeming quality of the human spirit, and a lifelong bond with baseball. It is for anyone who believes that life is too precious to cease thinking and learning, and recognizes that, in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, "There is no human being who does not carry a treasure in his soul: a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence..." 

I believe human interaction is at its best when people are not afraid to reveal themselves, when we are open to civil discourse and healthy give-and-take on matters of substance. Besides, the weather has never been all that interesting to me.  --from Life Goes On

In Life Goes On, Ehlers breathes new life into a neglected form through masterfully crafted, universally relatable, and deeply personal essays. 

To purchase a copy of this thought-provoking, highly readable book, visit the author's website at:

www.authormarkehlers.com 

or order the book on: 

Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. 

LISTEN TO MARK'S INTERVIEWS BY STU TAYLOR

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Also available:  

Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart: Essays on Life, Politics, Baseball and Religion by Mark J. Ehlers.  

An inspirational and thought-provoking  collection of essays on life, politics, baseball, and religion. Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart is a book for anyone who believes that life is too short to remain uninvolved, time too precious to cease learning, thinking, caring, and laughing.

It was not until I turned 50 earlier this year . . . that I sensed for the first time that certain of my dreams may forever be deferred, that time is a gift, its limits felt with the passing of each year. Though it seems as if I need constant reminding that I am no longer a young man, fresh from law school, determined to accomplish high-minded things, I remain confident and sure of myself about certain matters, full of doubts and insecurities about others. But I now recognize  and feel, gradually and incrementally, the burdens of aging . . . I know that life is not forever. Mortality awaits me and, for the first time in my life, I am truly aware of its dimensions. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for it forces one to recognize the truly important things in life -- family, relationships, closeness with God, and the true meaning of success. As Albert Huffstickler wrote, "Knowing there's only so much time, I don't rejoice less but more."

Visit the author's website at:

www.authormarkehlers.com 

or order the book on: 

Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. 

LISTEN TO MARK'S INTERVIEWS BY STU TAYLOR

The Last Word . . . For Now

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works. – Virginia Woolf

In the spring of 1987, Faye Moscowitz, a soft-spoken instructor and author, introduced me to the personal essay in a night class on creative writing at the Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C. Two years earlier, Moscowitz had published A Leak in the Heart: Tales from a Woman’s Life, a collection of short, autobiographical essays on growing up in a small Michigan town, in an unassimilated Orthodox Jewish family, during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Her writing is elegant and simple. In A Leak in the Heart, her words paint a picture, frozen in time, of the insular world of her youth, days of struggle and conflict, when she was torn between the comfort of tradition and the seduction of modernity. She describes feeling the blues at Christmas while in third grade, when it seemed everyone around her was celebrating the birth of Christ and she was an outsider, unable to fit in; of marrying at the age of eighteen and settling for a life of child rearing and housekeeping, because that is what was expected of young Orthodox Jewish women in those days. She writes of when, in her thirties, she developed the self-confidence to attend college while raising four children, and of how she eventually became a political activist and feminist, a writer and a teacher.

Her writing class consisted of ten students, men and women of all ages and stages in life who sought an outlet for their more creative selves. Seekers all of us, we listened to Moscowitz discuss the process of writing creatively about personal memories and experiences. She assigned us writing exercises to get us started, and each week in class we read aloud our work and offered each other constructive criticism. It was Moscowitz who taught me the most important lesson of all: simply write and the words will form. My writing was undisciplined and uneven back then, but I learned that if I did not put pen to paper, I would never write at all.

Although I would take another writing class in the summer of 2001, taught by a lawyer turned writer who encouraged me to pursue more seriously the craft of writing, these brief diversions into creativity failed to induce in me a commitment to write for pleasure, to devote the time and attention required to pursue writing even for the simple love of writing. Through the years, I contemplated often a life of writing, but did little to follow through. Without a reason to write, or a class-imposed deadline, there was always an excuse – work, parental responsibilities, and lack of time – some reason or obstacle that stood in the way.

But that finally changed in August 2009, when I began writing the collection of essays found on these pages. A small but committed readership and imaginary, self-imposed deadlines encouraged me to write with some regularity, to create what is now Ehlers on Everything. For the past three-and-a-half years I have made time to think, write, and engage with the world. Publishing the essays and stories on this site has been a labor of love and has allowed me to express my thoughts, opinions, and insights on aspects of my life and the lives of others; to explore my passions – baseball, politics, and religion; to ask questions, about life, faith, and the things that matter. It has allowed me to write about universal themes that affect everyone, but which many of us often overlook or ignore; to write about the enduring condition of the human spirit, the beauty of redemption and second chances, the power of compassion and my hopes for humankind.

Over what are now 120 essays, I have reflected on the passage of time and unmet dreams; the conflicts of faith in a secular age and the quest for eternal truth; my bond with baseball, in which I see life in all its dimensions and which allows me to recapture, in words, the essence of lost youth. I have examined issues of war and peace, law and economics, social justice and civic obligation. I have attempted to provide a perspective on the key social and political issues of our time without, I hope, being overly judgmental or disrespectful of opposing views. I have promoted civility in our political discourse. I have suggested that Americans have much for which to be proud, but that we should not be smug, for we alone do not have all the answers to the world’s problems. I have written about the people I admire and from whom I find inspiration, and about historical events for which I find parallels and guidance for confronting today’s challenges.

As another year comes to a close, as violent conflict continues to rage in Afghanistan and the Middle East, as gun violence continues to cut short the lives of our children here at home, as our politics continues to be fragmented and our nation divided, I am taking a temporary sabbatical from Ehlers on Everything. I do not intend to stop writing, only to change venue, to modify the location of my canvas. The recent tragedy in Newtown proves that, while I could continue to write about many of the same issues over again, I risk repeating myself while offering little in the way of fresh insight and perspective. Although I will happily trade my day job should The New York Times come calling, I am not a columnist that needs to submit 1,000 words of material on current events every third day. It is time to pursue more creative avenues for my writing, to explore fiction and the short story as an art form, to confront humanity in all its dimensions. A year-long foray into fiction will, I hope, allow me to further examine in-depth the themes of redemption and forgiveness, the disappointment of dreams unfulfilled, our aspirations for the human spirit, the ever present search for God in the messiness that is life on Earth, and other issues and themes more flexibly explored in the context of fiction.

“We write to taste life twice,” wrote Anais Nin, “in the moment and in retrospect.” I do not write for money or fame; if those were my goals, I have failed miserably. I love to write – not because it is easy, it is not – for it allows me to better understand the world in all its complexity. Writing forces clarity of thought and a deeper sense of self-awareness. Words matter, and a well-crafted essay or story has the power to move people, to change hearts and minds, if only for a moment. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word,” wrote Mark Twain, “is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

“If you want to be a writer,” teaches Stephen King, “you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” It is for this reason I must devote more time to reading, studying, and reflecting, to further refine my writing and develop and encourage my creative instincts; to explore in a less restrictive platform my quest for the human spirit; and to write about experiences that have influenced my outlook on life, the people that move and inspire me, and the issues that continue to confound all of us.

Thomas Mann once said, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” That is certainly true for me. But while I must continue to write, think, and read, I must also allow myself the opportunity to fail. Only if I push myself beyond my limits; only if I demand perfection where such is impossible, can I ever seek to be a writer.

Some of the essays on these pages, including those published in Eat Bananas and Follow Your Heart (Bookstand Publishing, 2011) and others I hope to publish in an upcoming collection, have started conversations and allowed us to talk about matters of importance. The essays have on occasion allowed us to reflect on life, faith, mortality, and the human condition, to examine questions and issues often neglected and overlooked in the noise of life. Some of my writing is self-directed, for how could it otherwise be? It is what I know, and about the only thing upon which I can speak with some authority. But I never intended these essays to be self-centered; to the extent I have failed in this, I offer my sincerest regrets.

Last Spring, I attended two commencement ceremonies, Jennifer’s graduation from American University in May and Hannah’s graduation from Upper Dublin High School in June. Commencements are happy and sad affairs all at once. We are happy and proud of our children’s’ accomplishments, but sad that they are moving on to a new journey. The commencement ceremony is a stark reminder that life moves quickly and that we must savor precious moments while we can. But in our sadness we should not forget that a commencement is not the end of something, but the start of something new, for the word itself means “the beginning”. So, this is my commencement of sorts, my graduation from Ehlers on Everything, the start of a new journey in fiction and short stories, and an attempt to more deeply reflect on life and the adventures, conflicts, and passions that come with it.

Henry David Thoreau admonished, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” I do not know if I have met Thoreau’s standards, if I have “stood up to live.” But in some small way, from the pleasure writing gives me to the soulful insights of the written word, I have come to grasp a deeper involvement with life and the world. I abhor small talk. My notion of success differs from that of mainstream culture. I take comfort in the words of author Erica Kennedy, who died this year at the youthful age of 42 and once asked what “having it all” actually means. “Does it mean having some fancy title, executive perks, making a lot of money, having your book on The New York Times’s best-seller list? Or does it mean waking up and looking forward to your day, whatever you make of it?”

In our remaining time on Earth, may we all wake up and look forward to the days and make something of them. To all of my faithful readers, and to anyone else who has ever ventured to these pages and spent even a little time here, you have my deepest thanks and gratitude. May peace come to you this New Year and may the world be filled with love and compassion for all.

Marty and Gertrude: An American Story

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. - Henry David Thoreau

Some people believe in destiny and fate, others in free will. For most of us, life is but a roll of the dice, a complex mixture of chance and circumstance that affects the course of our lives. We do not choose the country of our birth and have no say in the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not choose our ethnicity, our race, or the major events of history that coincide with our own personal histories. Some people are born rich and privileged, while others are born poor and unloved. But all of us must learn to live with the cards we are dealt and, ultimately, choose how we live.

Through my relationship with Andrea, I have been blessed these past ten years to have come to know two extraordinary human beings, Marty and Gertrude Gelman. They are Andrea’s parents, but more importantly, they are models of decency and how to live one’s life; two people who together have confronted life’s many challenges and built lives of rich fulfillment.

Born in the roaring twenties and raised in the Great Depression, survivors of the Great War, the story of Martin and Gertrude Gelman is an American story. They first met in 1938, when the photograph above was taken. I am not certain who took the picture, but at that very moment Gert Golden, a sassy 15 year-old girl from West Oak Lane, was introduced to Marty Gelman of the Logan section of Philadelphia. The young man making the introduction was Marty’s best friend, Seymour Frank. Gertrude and Seymour were dating at the time and, not surprisingly, Seymour had taken a liking to her. But this was the Great Depression, times were tough, and Seymour had landed a job for the summer as a busboy in New Jersey. As he would not have the means or a car to return to Philadelphia during the summer, he hoped Marty could keep an eye on Gert while Seymour was away.

Marty, whose back is to the camera in the above photograph, was nothing if not a young man of his word, so he was most happy to oblige. And keep an eye on her he did. By the time Seymour returned at summer’s end, Marty confessed that he and Gertrude had fallen in love. Six years later, they were married; it is a bond that has lasted sixty-eight years and counting.

When Seymour told this story a few weeks ago at Gertrude’s 90th birthday celebration, he acknowledged his disappointment at the course of events. “But,” he said, “If someone was going to steal away my girl, at least it should be my best friend.” As Seymour quipped, “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Marty, and nothing Marty wouldn’t do for me. And we’ve spent our whole lives doing nothing for each other.” Seymour proudly noted that, seven decades later, he, Marty, and Gertrude remain the best of friends. But as for Marty, Seymour added with a twinkle, “I never did trust the son-of-a-bitch.”

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“Life is like a blanket too short,” wrote Marion Howard. “You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night.” The most amazing thing about Gertrude is her upbeat and positive manner. It is a cheeriness that defies logic once you know something of her young life. Born in 1922 to a tailor’s family in Philadelphia, Gertrude was five years old when her mother was hospitalized. It was a tragic story, one that Gertrude would only piece together in later years, with the benefit of time and distance; a story of conflict and disharmony. But for a young child in need of a mother’s love, it could only have been confusing and frightening.

A year later, Gertrude’s father, a lifelong smoker, developed lung cancer, became very ill and was hospitalized. Gertrude, now six and essentially parentless, was sent to live with relatives, a family of modest means with many mouths to feed. It would be only a temporary home. The last time Gertrude saw her father was towards the end of 1929, close to her seventh birthday. She remembers the year because only a few months earlier the stock market crashed, plunging the country into the Great Depression. Her father, who remained sick in bed, died not long after.

Parentless at the age of seven, Gertrude was eventually placed in foster care, cared for by the Association of Jewish Children of Philadelphia. She moved from home-to-home, five in all, some better and more caring than others. She remained a foster child until the age of 16, when she moved in with her oldest brother, Jack, and his wife, Fritzie. Although she saw her mother once at the age of 13 and sporadically thereafter, the visits were often difficult and unsatisfying. It was not a sheltered, pampered, or privileged life. Life was hard. But through it all, Gertrude never lost her sense of optimism. She has said that once, around the age of ten and feeling sorry for herself, she came to the realization that her destiny was in her hands. “And then I stopped crying and got on with my life.”

In 1940, two years after she met Marty, Gertrude graduated from Olney High School. But most girls in those days didn’t attend college, so she went to work, earning ten dollars a week at J. Schwartz & Company, a furniture store on Germantown Avenue. She and Marty would later become engaged, but when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Marty went off to war. Gertrude landed a job at the Frankford Arsenal, delivering mail and doing administrative tasks for the Small Arms Department, Mail and Records. Perhaps it was there that Gertrude developed the philosophy that has served her well all these years. “Smile at people and they will smile back.” “Laugh a lot – at how ridiculous life is. It helps you get through a lot of the hurt.” “Above all else, do no harm.”

A weaker person may have lost hope and become bitter at life’s offerings, but Gertrude never lost her positive outlook and always treated people with friendliness and kindness. Although she is not a deeply religious person, deep down, I believe, she has a faith, in God or the human spirit, which helps her get through difficult times. She could not have helped but wonder every day whether a telegram would arrive informing her that Marty had been killed in action, news that would afflict hundreds of thousands of wives and girlfriends, mothers and fathers, throughout that deadly war. But Gertrude never lost hope and, by the summer of 1944, Marty had completed his 50 missions and returned home. They were married three days later.

Over the next several years, Gertrude gave birth to three children and took care of the household while Marty worked days and attended graduate school at night. An intelligent and intellectually engaged woman, in later years Gertrude would go back to school, first at Montgomery County Community College, and later, Beaver College (now Arcadia University) in Glenside, Pennsylvania, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1982 at the youthful age of 59. She even found time to take care of stray animals, including an injured baby squirrel that had fallen from its nest. Whenever her children complained, she would have none of it. All of them recognized, as adults, just how right she was. They knew that their mother was the foundation of her family, a rock of stability, and the strength of the Gelman clan.

[T]he powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. ~Walt Whitman, "O Me! O Life!", Leaves of Grass

I know less of Marty’s childhood years, except that they were happier and more stable, the perfect antidote to Gertrude’s young life. Marty was the son of Jacob Gelman, a printer who owned a shop on Cherry Street in Philadelphia, next door to Kelly for Brickwork, owned by the father of Grace Kelly. Gelman’s Sign and Printing was a family affair, co-founded by Jacob and his two brothers, with family members performing all of the tasks needed to run and operate the business.

Marty was a smart, street-wise kid with an intellectual bent. As an eleven year-old boy in 1932, when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, he sensed that another world war was on the horizon. His parents did not discuss current affairs, but Marty paid close attention. By the time he met Gertrude in the late 1930’s, he was very aware of world events and followed the political rise and growing power of Hitler with great trepidation. Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the whole world changed. Marty was 20 years old. Like many young men at the time, my uncle Ted (my Dad’s oldest brother) included, he enlisted. Life would never be the same again.

Years later, Marty would describe the heavy cloud that hovered above as he left for training camp, a burden he now recognizes as “sadness, numbness”. He worried that he would not measure up as a man and wondered how, as a Jewish kid from Philadelphia, he would be perceived and accepted by the gentiles, particularly in a war that he knew would have a profound impact on Jews. Like most of the young men he was about to meet, he was “frightened, distraught, filled with despair.” Soon he would realize that, from the vantage point of a scared soldier, religion and ethnicity and differences mattered not at all. All were Americans fighting for freedom and peace.

He was stationed in Italy and served as lead navigator in the 15th Air Force, 450th Bombardment Group, which flew B-24 Liberators. Now considered a member of the Greatest Generation, he scoffs at such a notion. “Each day I awoke with terror of not wondering if I would die, but how I would die,” he said during an interview in the fall of 2007. “Each day that passed was just a postponement of tomorrow’s execution.” He loved receiving mail but found it difficult to write home. “What was there to say when you know that tomorrow you will have to die. To this day, I don’t understand how it turned out otherwise.”

Through the grace of God and the fortunes of fate, Marty made it through the war, surviving 50 missions over enemy occupied Europe, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and countless medals and honors. His crew survived three forced landings in the mountains of Corsica, but in the end, he was the only one that made it back unscathed. His last mission, the 50th, was aborted three times before his crew was granted a three-day reprieve for some R&R in Bari, off the coast of the Adriatic Sea. But Marty was impatient and ready to go home. He could not tolerate the delay, so he volunteered for another mission, with another crew. An angel must have watched over him that day. “I caught a break,” he recalled years later. “It was a milk run. There was no flak, there were no fighters.” With 50 missions completed, he could now go home. His return was bittersweet; perhaps it was fate, or just plain dumb luck, but on the very next mission flown by Marty’s assigned crew, the plane was shot down. The crew members who survived became prisoners of war. As Gertrude later recalled, “Marty’s bewilderment at the bizarre manipulation of fate . . . left him numb.”

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time,” wrote Eudora Welty, “but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order ... the continuous thread of revelation.” It took fourteen long days for Marty to get back to the shores of the United States (by ship) and, as no one in his family knew precisely when he was to arrive, when Marty reached his parents’ house in Philadelphia, no one was home. He got on the phone and called Gertrude, who came over right away. His family had gone to Atlantic City for the day, but when they learned of Marty’s arrival, they rushed home. That night, Marty and Gertrude made plans to marry and, three days later, they were husband and wife. The rest is history. Three wonderful, accomplished children, four beautiful grandchildren, and a life of love and fulfillment.

While working at the family print shop, Marty attended Temple University at night and eventually earned two Ph.D.’s (Anthropology and Psychology). He began a successful clinical practice and taught for 45 years at Montgomery County Community College, where he was one of its first professors in 1964, and where he molded and impressed the minds of thousands of grateful students. Never having forgotten the unheralded protection that the Tuskegee Airmen had provided his B-24 crew during the war, and sensitive to the slights caused by discrimination and prejudice, Marty, as head of the Social Sciences Department, was instrumental in hiring the college's first African American professor. He also mentored and supported the African American Student League, for which he was given special recognition at a 2008 Martin Luther King Day celebration, the only white professor in the college’s history so recognized.

In looking back on his time at war, on the death and destruction that was a part of everyday life for young men in their late teens and early twenties, Marty has recalled that it took more than 30 years before he could resurrect the pain and heartache he experienced in combat. It is a pain that “has made it difficult for me to cry about loss or to fully face life head on.” He dismisses the notion that war makes a man out of you. “War makes a man out of no one,” he insists. “The best it does is rip away the filter of illusion and scald you with the reality of the baseness of human existence. It’s a waste. The military isn’t cruel, it just doesn’t give a damn.”

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light. – Albert Schweitzer

I have only known Martin and Gertrude Gelman for ten years or so, but my life has been greatly enriched because of it. As with my own parents, it is hard to imagine two people better suited for each other. They are generous to a fault, love their children unconditionally, and continue to look at the world and the human race with a healthy dose of humor. “We are a rotten species,” Marty often jokes. But their love of America is unrivaled and their appreciation for a good book, a good lecture, sage advice, and a young child’s smile is readily apparent. Good conversationalists, you can always anticipate a lively debate, or a story or two, when eating dinner with the Gelmans. Gertrude remains the optimistic, upbeat one; perhaps from a deep-seated recognition of the deprivations of the human spirit and weakness of human character, Marty remains the realist.

“God asks no man whether he will accept life,” wrote Henry Ward Beecher. “That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how.” Martin and Gertrude Gelman are the rare breed of human beings who have accepted life’s many challenges and risen above them without complaint. We choose our own destiny in life and must make the most of it. Erma Bombeck once said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’” Here is to Marty and Gertrude, an extraordinary couple who gave life everything they had. The world needs more people like them.