Reading the paper on February 8, 1945.

Washington, London and Moscow issued identical statements yesterday which said the “Big Three” Allied leaders, FDR, Churchill and Stalin, had reached ‘complete agreement’ on operations for the final phase of the war against Nazi Germany.

They are meeting somewhere in the Black Sea area, reports say, and are now discussing plans for the postwar occupation of Germany, problems anticipated in liberated Europe, including fixing boundaries, and the establishment of a world peace organization.

General George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, is among the American advisors attending the Yalta meeting.

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It is April 1861 and America has been torn in two.

Secession has culminated in the formation of the Confederate States of America.

The South Carolina militia has fired upon the federal garrison at Fort Sumter.

Northern states have answered President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers in overwhelming numbers.

They are on the march to Washington to defend the nation’s capital from Southern armies forming on the other side of the Potomac River.

The poet Walt Whitman, a native New Yorker, was walking down Broadway at midnight on April 12, 1861, when he heard that Confederate forces had fired upon Fort Sumter.

Later, he wrote this poem about the year 1861.

Arm'd year! year of the struggle!

No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year!

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It is August 10, 1921.

Franklin Roosevelt and his family have spent the day sailing and

swimming at the family’s vacation home on Canada’s Campobello Island.

Franklin had tumbled out of his boat at one point during the day

but no one had thought much of it.

But in the evening, Franklin’s legs began to ache, and he felt feverish.

So, he went to bed early.

The next morning, his fever had worsened,

and he struggled to cross the hallway to reach the bathroom.

Franklin’s left leg buckled under his weight.

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It is March 28, 1945.

US Navy vessels are in the midst of a seven-day bombardment of the Hagushi beaches of Okinawa in preparation for an amphibious assault there which will land sixty thousand American troops onshore by nightfall on April 1.

The fleet of 1,300 naval vessels includes several minesweepers, whose job is to clear sea lanes to the beach landing zones.

Don Panek serves on one of them, the minesweeper USS Revenge.

Here is his diary entry for the day:

“Everything came off smooth as usual and [we] proceeded into our designated sweep area.

We were sweeping in formation as follows— the Skylark–Sage–Revenge–Pursuit.

Then it happened—what we all had feared most—the lead ship [the Skylark] hit a mine.

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When the ‘Queen of the Back Bay’ opened her namesake museum in Boston in 1903, she served champagne and doughnuts while the Boston Symphony Orchestra played.

Infamous for wearing a white headband to the symphony on which she had written, ‘Oh, you Red Sox,” the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was the realization of a dream Isabella had shared with her beloved, departed husband, Jack.

Isabella and Jack had traveled the world together for decades, amassing a stunning art collection.

Having lost an infant son and with no other heir, they had decided their collection should be put on permanent display to ‘entertain and educate the public forever.’

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It is April 12, 1963.

Dr. Martin Luther King is in the Birmingham, Alabama, jail.

He has been arrested for leading a civil rights march in defiance

of an injunction banning protest activity.

During King’s incarceration, he will write a letter which will be considered

the most important document of the civil rights era.

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Reading the paper on February 1, 1945.

As American infantry continued their drive toward the German Siegfried Line of western defense yesterday, Soviet tanks and infantry smashed through Berlin’s outer defenses along a sixty-mile wide front in the east and are now within sixty-three miles of the Nazi capital.

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Some words from Walt Whitman:

“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

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I

"I was standing next to my mother as they were sorting us. The German came over and put me in the working group. But he noticed that I ran away, back to my mother. He stuck me in my arm with his bayonet and he said, 'You're in a concentration camp and you'd better behave or you'll be shot on the spot.' Then my mother marched away, and my father, and my five brothers. I never saw them again."

For the next six months, Lili cleaned the camp toilets, subsisting on a slice of bread and a cup of water in the morning and barley soup and bread at night.

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Back then, on D-Day, having faith in America was a good bet.

I don’t know how to calculate the cost of squandering this legacy.

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