My Dad's Silver Dollars
Reviving the Idea of Peace
Since the end of World War II in 1945, the United States has been in a state of more or less permanent war. It hasn’t gone well for America, and far less well for other peoples around the globe, whether in Southeast Asia or Central Asia or the Middle East or Africa or Latin America … well, you get the point. America’s lost wars are legion, notably in Vietnam but also more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, which only leads to even more military spending in the cause of winning the next war, wherever that might be. And for the U.S. it could be almost anywhere, since its military is deployed globally with roughly 750 foreign bases, all possible sites of an “attack on America” that could lead to yet another disastrous war.
By comparison, a word we rarely hear today in American discourse is “peace.” Rarely do politicians in either major party speak of the possibility of peace. John F. Kennedy spoke brilliantly of peace in June of 1963, at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, after which the idea of peace was discarded for war in Vietnam, spilling over into Laos and Cambodia and killing millions.
The continued absence of peace in our discourse today made me reflect on this short piece that I wrote six years ago.
My Dad's Silver Dollars
My dad left me two silver dollars. They're worth much in sentimental value (I'll explain in a moment), but they also teach us something about how America has changed.
Here's a photo of them. Lady Liberty is on the front, an eagle is on the back.
These were "peace" dollars issued in the aftermath of World War I. (Note the word "peace" under the eagle.) Imagine that: a coin issued by the USA dedicated to and celebrating peace! It's truly hard to imagine such a coin being issued today, and not only because our currency is now made only with base metal (a debased currency?).
In keeping with U.S. foreign policy today, an equivalent 2018 (faux silver) dollar would doubtless feature the god of war on the front with a menacing eagle clutching missiles, drones, and bombs on the back.
Anyway, I promised a story about my dad's silver dollars, and I'm going to let him tell it:
"I have a silver dollar in my coin collection. Helen and I were courting at the time. At Nantasket beach [in Massachusetts] there was a glass container with prizes, candy, coins, etc. Also a crank on the unit which when turned controlled a flexible scoop. The idea was to work the scoop to pick up something of value. Well, I took a chance. It was like magic; the scoop just went down and picked up the silver dollar. I gave it to Ma as a remembrance. We’ve had it ever since."
"The other silver dollar has a story also. A buddy in the service [Army] gave it to me for a birthday present [during World War II]."
After my dad died, these coins passed to me. One is from 1922, the other from 1924. I love the "peace" eagle they feature, though we know peace was not in the cards for long after the Great War. And of course I love my dad's stories of how he came to possess them.
When will America's coinage next feature a tribute to the end of war and the promise of peace?
I was in 7th grade when my brother left for Vietnam. I remember so clearly, our family, including aunts, uncles and cousins, our pastor, and close neighbors standing between the Toledo airport terminal and the jet that would carry him to his fate as his new wife of only a few months and my parents hugged him in a brief but tearful farewell.
Just as acutely, I recall the rage with which he returned--alive and well, we thought. Across the road from our farm were neighbors and our closest friends. Their oldest son and my oldest brother were classmates and friends. Now the war threatened to divide them. The neighbor and classmate was Mennonite of a stricter church than ours. He spent his duty as a CO in a hospital in Washington state. So while he spent the first year of his marriage with his wife, my brother spent the first year of marriage separated from his. My father, himself a Navy vet of WWII, spelled out how my brother would never heal if he couldn't again befriend his longest and closest friend who returned from Washington to farm in the same township.
I have no idea how long it took my brother to truly reconcile this in his own mind. He remained a proud vet to the end. (A bit too proud it seemed to me for what he endured later). But the neighbor was a true friend and visited and helped my brother through to his death which was not pretty. My brother's relatively safe post as a clerk in Saigon happen to be in a small office in the depot where Agent Orange was stored.
It has always been a reminder to me that regardless of what our nation does or doesn't do, there is perhaps no greater inner peace than forgiveness and understanding. A lesson a young enraged army vet learned well enough.
My father was born in June of 1898 and I have two almost mint 1898 silver dollars (Morgan) that I am going to pass on to my two children. They feature the eagle grasping an olive branch and arrows. In that month of 1898 the Marines landed in Cuba and in Guam. The US House decided to annex Hawaii. The age of the American empire began.
What I think characterizes America most is the drive for more that has been present all along since the founding. Today at Panera, I put in an order for my usual small coffee only to be told that there is no longer a small coffee and I must choose between medium and large. I thought to myself that there could easily be a motto for America - "we don't do small" shown in everything from the Superbowl to huge gasoline engined vehicles as the globe warms, to the epidemic of obesity, to the all out aid of a microscopic country out to take by force and slaughter the land of others.
You mentioned we aren't on any currency standard. That could have been predicted as there is simply no amount of anything physical (by nature limited) that can support the infinite growth of money so we are employing the charade that the standard for the dollar is the dollar.
Of course this will all end, the only questions are how and when. Certainly it can be said change will not come from any rational planning by American leadership. I'd liken it to an accelerating train. You know it can't keep on going faster, but who could possibly say where along the track and at which curve will the derailment happen? We are all hanging on while every politician says the answer to everything is growth (taken almost entirely by the 1%).
We are in the novel situation of the future being completely unpredictable in detail but absolutely predictable in that there will be an end to the system we live under. Is is not surprising that anxiety is felt by all and even science fiction, once a genre full of hope, is now uniformly bleak and ominous.
Like children who want everything, take responsibility for nothing and become angry when denied, we go from day to day. Is change possible? Will it start under a war criminal or a con man from which we must choose in November? I think not.