Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [22]
There was some truth to the notion that the city was not for those with delicate sensibilities. The city gave America Al Capone, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, and its legendary machine politics—denizens of its cemeteries were known for voting early and often. Chicago’s residents took a certain pride in their rough-and-tumble ways. It was a city where one’s value was measured not so much by pedigree but by sweat. “Chicago,” American writer Lincoln Steffens once wrote, quite correctly, “will give you a chance.”5
My father had spent most of his youth and first years of marriage in modest apartments in the city and was eager to move his family to a house in the suburbs. When I was six, we moved to nearby Evanston, home of Northwestern University, and then finally to a house in Winnetka, a small suburb to the north. These moves were not idle decisions but ones that my father, quite typically, had carefully thought through. Dad believed that the areas where the schools were considered the best tended to be areas where property values would increase. Winnetka, in the New Trier High School district, was such a place. We shared our house with Dad’s mother, Lizette, and her mother, Elizabeth. The older women, who had raised Dad, often spoke to each other in German.*
These days Winnetka is a well-to-do bedroom suburb of Chicago, but in the 1930s the town was economically diverse. Our neighborhood was a mix of businessmen with families and immigrant and working-class families: construction workers, a train conductor, an electrical power line worker, a gardener, and a cleaner among them.
I guess because my parents were energetic people, I must have inherited that characteristic at an early age. In addition to my studies, I played third base on Conney’s Cubs, our village hardball team, which was sponsored by the local pharmacy. I joined the Cub Scouts when I was seven, and enjoyed excursions to hike, fish, and canoe. As far back as I can remember I had odd jobs. I was not yet ten when I determined that I would earn enough money for my first Schwinn bicycle. I delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, and sold magazine subscriptions, including the Norman Rockwell–covered Saturday Evening Post. On Saturdays I earned a hefty twenty cents for delivering a neighbor’s homemade sandwiches to the employees at the Winnetka Trust & Savings Bank. When I finally earned enough money for my red Schwinn, it seemed the most perfect thing in the world. For kids in our neighborhood, our bikes were freedom. We could go anywhere we wanted. At least until it was time to come home.
All in all, mine was a fairly typical childhood in a small Midwestern town in the 1930s. Before Pearl Harbor.
Shortly after the Japanese attack, my father volunteered to join the Navy. Dad was not an ideal recruit. He was thirty-eight years old, well past the age draft boards were seeking. He had a slight frame that made him appear frailer than he was. The Navy recruiting office turned him away.
Instead of giving up, Dad embarked on an effort to gain weight. He ate banana splits, milk shakes, and anything else that would pack on pounds. After undertaking this regimen, Dad went back to the recruiting office and tried again.
It may have helped him that the war was not going well. The recruiting office finally said yes and told the determined man with the German name to prepare to deploy for officer training. His decision meant a big change in our lives.
After his ninety-day training assignment in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, Dad was commissioned, and our family moved to a blimp base near Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Navy blimps were used to spot German U-boats stalking Allied merchant ships in the Atlantic. My father didn’t want to spend the war in North Carolina though, and quickly requested a transfer to sea duty. Eventually his request was granted, and he was assigned to the USS Bismarck