Person of the Year: Ernest Grant

So TIME Magazine chooses the former KGB member Vladimir Putin as man of the year. Wow. Instead of choosing someone who has uplifted, inspired, and helped to mold this country, TIME chose a snake-like, duplicitous man who has seen some of his most courageous rivals disappear. Granted, TIME says that it does not choose the person to necessarily praise them but to show what an impact the person has had. The Weekly Standard chose David Petraeus, a quiet, well-spoken giant of a man who has led America’s finest in a battle surge that is changing the face of the entire Iraq conflict.

For my own part, I choose a man who most of you have never heard about and who worked most of his life in Sioux City, Iowa–Ernest Grant. I had spent only an hour of my life listening to him, but what I heard, I will not soon forget. It is my hope that after reading this, you will not soon forget this man, Men Like Trees Walking’s Person of the Year.

At North High School, I have tried with some hard-working teachers to present our students to the Greatest Generation, American servicemen and women who fought in WWII, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have introduced students to 11 WWII vets, Col. Bud Day (the most highly decorated living soldier and John McCain’s cell mate), and several different soldiers who brought gear and pictures of Saddam’s palaces. As a whole, not all North High students are known for their rapt attention and respect. But our expectations on those special days–dressing up, listening well, helping to honor the men–has resulted in the most satisfying days of my teaching career.

So it was that a student last year told me that Ernest Grant had fought in World War II. I called him to ask if he would be willing to speak. He started to tell me, “I don’t know if I’m much of a speaker. You know. It was really difficult–it’s a difficult thing to talk about it.” I told him I understood and anything he could tell our students would be great. I looked at the clock because I had five minutes before an especially rowdy class would be in my room. “It all started when our plane was shot down…”

The next few minutes were like a haze in my memory. Fragments and pieces of the story, every man dead beside him except one…a farmhouse…German Nazis below him…a French family…worry that he wouldn’t be interesting or able to tell everything perfectly. I assured Ernest that he would do fine.

The day arrived, and Ernest came, thin and frail, donning a sweater, a man who must have been singularly handsome in his day. We had asked our veteran speakers to speak twice, but his daughter told us that he hadn’t spoken about his ordeal like this. One could tell that she was unsure of how he would do. He came to the front of the classroom. 36 students looked at him. One’s eyebrows raised. I breathed in, and Ernest started.

What followed was a perfectly lucid recount of perhaps the most amazing story I have ever heard. Ernest was born in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1922 and was a star baseball player in high school. After playing on a state championship team, the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor and the next thing he knew, Ernest was flying over France as a 20-year-old when his plane was shot down.

Every man was killed except one. Wide-eyed, with measured pace, but recalling the thing, the emotion seemed raw as if he was recalling last week’s heavy heartedness. Imagine Ernest losing every person he had been closest to–guys he joked with, smoked with, talked with of dreams of marriage, jobs, and new cities upon returning home. Except that in a flash, the pain of his broken body and bloodied face subsided into the searing pain that none of those boys would have a single one of their dreams fulfilled. In a smoke-filled France, Ernest Grant realized for the first time that he was alone. Until the thought struck him, there were those who would be by his side in a minute–the Nazis of now German-occupied France.

What makes Ernest Grant’s story so remarkable is a story of sacrifice that runs counter to our culture today. A French family took Ernest in. Maybe there was a kindred connection that America and France were staunch allies. Maybe they had pity on this boy who hardly knew a word of French, lost and alone.

The stakes could not have been higher. Just a kilometer away, a French Catholic bishop was housing 10 American soldiers in the back of his cathedral. When the Nazis discovered who the bishop was hiding, they made sure that a ghastly spectacle made it clear that their expectations were to hand over any enemy to the new state. All 10 of the soldiers were marched into the street in front of the cathedral. Each one was shot in the back of the head. Then the elderly bishop looking on in horror was dragged in front, pleading for his life until a bullet stopped short his pleadings. Such was the danger that this French family faced who held a boy with a Boston accent atop their lodgings–for over a year.

There is a silence that communicates more than words. When Ernest Grant spoke of this family, a distance showed in his eyes. Something of gratitude–not the kind that you give for a material gift–that cannot be expressed for laying one’s life on the line is apt to be expressed by earnest eyes and awestruck dumbness. So it was with Ernest Grant.

Ernest Grant survived over four dozen Nazis raiding the French family below him for supplies, the taking of six Nazis he ended up handing over to the French Underground, the American occupation and liberation of France, stints with semi-pro baseball teams, an accident at Swift Packing Plant in 1949 which, in a sad repeat of the earlier memory, killed 21 of his co-workers, the death of his wife in 2002 after 56 years of marriage, and stood to tell it all to 36 freshmen. The French family sent their son to visit Ernest and America upon the son’s graduation from high school. Their sacrifice would indelibly be etched in Ernest’s memory until he passed away–two weeks ago–on December 10, 2007. Upon reading his obituary, the thought struck me. The French family risked their lives for Ernest’s.

And so Ernest Grant did for his fellow American and millions who were enduring the nightmare of the evils of Nazism, Fascism, and Imperialism. As the French family did not know Ernest Grant, so Ernest did not know every person he fought for. And he stood in front of us at our high school at 83 years old. What seemed to be frailty and weakness were transformed into hardy grit and weathered battlewounds making me realize that there are very few people like the French family or Ernest Grant in the world.

We are a little less today because a hero has passed from us, quietly, without great pomp or ceremony. If my son were to have met this man, I would have said, “Son, stand up. Ernest Grant is passing by.” But I will tell Ernest Grant’s story. Such men are the kind a father wishes a son to be.