Spirit of America
Spirit of America, my favorite charity, is featured today in Daniel Henninger's "Wonder Land" column in the Wall Street Journal.
The column details Spirit of America's newest effort, which will protect and promote democracy in Iraq during the upcoming election there. Once again, this seems to be one of those no-brainers: whether you love Bush or hate him, whether you support the war or oppose it, democracy in Iraq is better for everyone in the world than civil war and medieval fundamentalism and thugocracy. The recent model of Afghanistan offers hope. Henninger concludes:
You can read more about the democracy project here.
Another SoA project I've donated to recently is providing sewing machines for the women of Ramadi.
But perhaps the effort that moved me most is the tools for tradesmen project.
My grandfather was a tool-and-die maker. Actually, before he was that, he was a juvenile delinquent in turn-of-the-century Philadelphia. Around 1911, a judge who got tired of seeing my grandfather and his older brother in his court sent the boys to the St. Joseph's Home for Industrious Homeless Boys, which stood in the 700 block of Pine Street. He used to tell us tales of being sent to a bakery nearby to pick up day-old bread for the meals in the home, and having to run a gauntlet of hungry bums who wanted the food. But he got a high school education and some professional training in the home.
Thanks to his training, he got jobs in industrial shops -- moulder's helper at the Cox Stove Foundry, drill press operator for the Philadelphia Lawnmower Co., lathe operator for Parson & Son tool & die company. Then the First World War broke out, and he and his brother got jobs in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, riding the Broad Street trolley to work. There he was apprenticed to a master tool and die maker.
The work continued after the war; each one a little higher up the ladder: Otis Elevator Co., Standard Pressed Steel Co., Fuller Machine Co., J.F. Johnson Tool & Die Co., Tucker Tool & Die Co., M.J. Brown Machine Co., Electric Service Supply Co., John Board Tool & Die Co., Atlantic Manufacturing Co. I know all the names, because he kept a careful record of each place he worked, up to his retirement. He was proud of his career of hard work. He was a hard man in many ways, competitive and brusque, though he loved his grandchildren. He knew he came from scratch, a half-Jewish, half-Irish kid from the slums of the city, and he knew what got him out of there.
He got married and had a couple of children. Then in August 1926 he fell sick with tuberculosis, the disease which had already cut a swath through his siblings, and he spent a year and seven months in a sanitarium in Hamburg, Pa., emerging in March 1928, weakened, but alive. His wife went to work as a switchboard operator in Philadelphia to feed the family.
The family moved out of the city, and after he got his health back, my grandfather found work at Hunter Pressed Steel Co. in Lansdale on Feb. 7, 1929. He was named foreman tool maker in 1930. They moved into a new house in 1932. He rode out the Great Depression there, and sent a son and a son-in-law off to fight World War II. He retired in 1962 and they moved to Florida, where he lived out his declining years happily fishing off the piers.
After he died, we found the box of his worn old hand tools, along with the account of his employment and some books of tables and charts and design patterns. There was a note in among them, a personal farewell: "Good-bye old tools. Without you I never could have clawed my way to the top."
When I see those scruffy kids on the streets of the Iraqi cities, and think how easily their lives could tilt one way or another, when I see the crowds of young men with idle hands and families to feed, I think of him.
The column details Spirit of America's newest effort, which will protect and promote democracy in Iraq during the upcoming election there. Once again, this seems to be one of those no-brainers: whether you love Bush or hate him, whether you support the war or oppose it, democracy in Iraq is better for everyone in the world than civil war and medieval fundamentalism and thugocracy. The recent model of Afghanistan offers hope. Henninger concludes:
From day one, Jim Hake has tried to run a nonpartisan organization, but I will ask an unavoidable, partisan question: What happens to these courageous Iraqi democrats if John Kerry wins, having called Iraq a "colossal mistake"? One way to dispel any confusion would be if Mr. Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry themselves made a contribution to Friends of Democracy.
You can read more about the democracy project here.
Another SoA project I've donated to recently is providing sewing machines for the women of Ramadi.
But perhaps the effort that moved me most is the tools for tradesmen project.
My grandfather was a tool-and-die maker. Actually, before he was that, he was a juvenile delinquent in turn-of-the-century Philadelphia. Around 1911, a judge who got tired of seeing my grandfather and his older brother in his court sent the boys to the St. Joseph's Home for Industrious Homeless Boys, which stood in the 700 block of Pine Street. He used to tell us tales of being sent to a bakery nearby to pick up day-old bread for the meals in the home, and having to run a gauntlet of hungry bums who wanted the food. But he got a high school education and some professional training in the home.
Thanks to his training, he got jobs in industrial shops -- moulder's helper at the Cox Stove Foundry, drill press operator for the Philadelphia Lawnmower Co., lathe operator for Parson & Son tool & die company. Then the First World War broke out, and he and his brother got jobs in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, riding the Broad Street trolley to work. There he was apprenticed to a master tool and die maker.
The work continued after the war; each one a little higher up the ladder: Otis Elevator Co., Standard Pressed Steel Co., Fuller Machine Co., J.F. Johnson Tool & Die Co., Tucker Tool & Die Co., M.J. Brown Machine Co., Electric Service Supply Co., John Board Tool & Die Co., Atlantic Manufacturing Co. I know all the names, because he kept a careful record of each place he worked, up to his retirement. He was proud of his career of hard work. He was a hard man in many ways, competitive and brusque, though he loved his grandchildren. He knew he came from scratch, a half-Jewish, half-Irish kid from the slums of the city, and he knew what got him out of there.
He got married and had a couple of children. Then in August 1926 he fell sick with tuberculosis, the disease which had already cut a swath through his siblings, and he spent a year and seven months in a sanitarium in Hamburg, Pa., emerging in March 1928, weakened, but alive. His wife went to work as a switchboard operator in Philadelphia to feed the family.
The family moved out of the city, and after he got his health back, my grandfather found work at Hunter Pressed Steel Co. in Lansdale on Feb. 7, 1929. He was named foreman tool maker in 1930. They moved into a new house in 1932. He rode out the Great Depression there, and sent a son and a son-in-law off to fight World War II. He retired in 1962 and they moved to Florida, where he lived out his declining years happily fishing off the piers.
After he died, we found the box of his worn old hand tools, along with the account of his employment and some books of tables and charts and design patterns. There was a note in among them, a personal farewell: "Good-bye old tools. Without you I never could have clawed my way to the top."
When I see those scruffy kids on the streets of the Iraqi cities, and think how easily their lives could tilt one way or another, when I see the crowds of young men with idle hands and families to feed, I think of him.
[Say the] voices of the unemployed…
No man has hired us
With pocketed hands
And lowered faces
We stand about in open places
And shiver in unlit rooms…
[T.S. Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”]
