An American Legacy

We have a chance to cement our legacy and it begins on January 20, 2025.

As we sit on the cusp of Trump’s historic return to the White House, I think how we want our our history to be written is a legitimate question.

There are so many people are who are still addicted to the pandemic porn of 2020 and want no part of a return to normalcy, so many adult babies whom find reality quite chafing to their soft skin.

Lately, I have been comparing the past few years to historical periods of real hardship and thinking about how our actions and the actions of our culture will be remembered. There is no argument that we faced a challenge of global proportions, one that goes far beyond our physical borders and it also transcends time. As we passed through the immediate crisis and the trying times in its wake, we were asked by those in control to continue to give up freedoms in exchange for some level of safety and security – but is that a deal we should be making?

Since the cornerstone of our country was laid, generations of Americans have made sacrifices to insure the future of this country. The first generation of our Revolution put their lives and property on the line for a chance for our future to be a free one. There were the generation who suffered through the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression to those of the Greatest Generation, who put aside the plow and picked up the sword to keep the world free from tyranny. There was the generation who stood up for civil rights so that the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” had true meaning. They seemingly had some sort of internal strength to be able to step up to these daunting tasks.

Sure, the Covid-19 pandemic was a serious situation, but the response to it was even worse. Was a total alteration of our culture and society the correct response or did it just serve to reveal our how weak we have become? Are we now being called to duty in service to a gilded age? Do we have the “right stuff” to make the hard choices? How will we be remembered? What legacy will we leave?

These seem legitimate questions.

A few years ago, I wrote about my maternal grandparents who faced challenges I hope we never face.

Since there is no future without a past, I remember the life and times of my maternal grandparents, Baker Thomas and Eva Gladys King Goodwin, their 74 years of marriage together and the 6 strong men and women (including my mom, Marie Evelyn Goodwin Smith) they reared on a farm in the Lebanon/Center community of northeast Mississippi.

As the years tick on, I realize my maternal grandparents had the greatest influence on my life. Of course, my mom and dad reared me, and I owe my life to them, but when I think about what I have become and achieved, I can trace a straight line to B.T. and Eva Goodwin and the years that I spent as a child and young adult at the old “home place” on that farm in Mississippi. As I get older and more cantankerous, there can be little doubt that Goodwin blood flows through my veins.

My grandmother, affectionately known as Mammy, was the kindest person I have ever known. She passed in 1984, but I can still feel the warmth of her hugs and the softness of her skin. I can still see her small, wrinkled hands and smell the Johnson’s Baby Powder that she wore. In a 1990 recording of our family history by a distant cousin of mine, he described her as:

“…one of the kindest, warmest and loving mothers one could ever have. The writer’s [Goodwin] Aunt Eva was the sweetest person I have known. Generous to a fault, I remember many times she sent food to our house to cook. She never, to my knowledge, said an unkind word about any person. She had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. I can still hear her laughter in my mind when I go back to the old home place. May God Bless them forever!!!”

The fact that she was remembered as a “warm and loving mother” should in no way imply that she was soft or weak. All six of her children were born either before or during the Great Depression. She had a heart of gold and a spine of spring steel; she was also one of the most God-fearing women that I have ever known. From her faith in God sprang forth her eternal optimism. She always told me that there is an answer for every problem if we just looked hard enough to find it. I like to think that she passed that optimism to me.

My grandfather, Baker Thomas Goodwin, was known to the family as “Big Daddy”. He was not an educated man by modern standards but that did not stop him from being wise. He was a voracious consumer of knowledge and a man who greatly valued education. He was a community leader sitting on local school boards for many, many years and before the days of Big Education, he supplied materials, labor, and money to build local schools.

My grandfather taught me valuable lessons – the value of honesty, the art of being plain spoken, the importance of character, the investment made in trust and the worth of a handshake. A lifelong farmer, he was honest to a fault and believed that hard work was its own reward. He did not harbor laziness or sloth and expected much from those around him, and he usually got it. He was a Tea Partier before there was a Tea Party; he paid his dues but always had a healthy skepticism about the “revenuers” and what they were doing with his money.

B.T. Goodwin was a determined (some would say stubborn) and independent man, tilling his truck patch until he was in his 90’s on top of his four-cylinder, 59.5 cubic inch Cub Farm-All tractor. He finally gave it up about 3 years before he passed due to waning health. He made that decision himself, and being a proud man, the Cub got quietly parked in the barn, never to move again during his life.

From him, I got his sense of determination, his value of honesty and his industry.

When I read passages from so called pundits who claim that the Founding Fathers just were not very smart and there is no way that they could have contemplated the problems of modernity, I think about my grandparents. These are the people who built our country. They persevered through times so difficult that they would break the backs of the whining punditry of today. I never heard them express envy or resentment of people who were better off than they were. They measured their happiness in what they had, not what they did not have. They faced hardships and wars on such a scale as to be unimaginable to the effete culture of today. My grandparents were long suffering, strong people. The qualities of my grandparents are the best mankind has to offer and the very attributes that can save our country today. It is curious to me that contemporary society seems so suicidal that it devalues the very characteristics that can save it.

I think back and remember how I squirmed to get out of Mammy’s hugs when I was a child. Today, I would give anything to have the peace of that embrace. I think about talking to Big Daddy about life and politics every morning on his front porch before I drove to high school. I miss his determination and his conviction. I miss the qualities of these two people, a man and a woman who shared 74 years together and made a life for themselves and their children out of a little more than hard work and Mississippi dirt, two people who never made headlines but left an indelible mark on the world though the lessons that they taught their children and grandchildren. These are the people upon whom our country was built.

My greatest wish is to be remembered as I remember them.

Each of us in our own way have an opportunity to change the direction of America forever. I want to be remembered as one who took up the challenge.