Toledo Blade, OH
June 26 2005
Bravery before and after the war
Some of Bob Dole’s greatest challenges came in his struggle to
recover from injuries sustained in World War II.
( THE BLADE )
By JACK LESSENBERRY
ONE SOLDIER’S STORY. By Bob Dole. Harper Collins. 287 pages. $25.95.
Years ago, when he was getting ready to run for president for the
first time, I spent part of a day with then-Senate Majority Leader
Robert Dole. My strongest memory of him up till then had been that of
the cranky, nasty hatchet man President Gerald Ford chose as his
running mate in 1976.
To my surprise, prickly old Bob Dole turned out to be an incredibly
decent man who was thoughtful and sensitive. The night before, he had
not shown up at a state dinner, and the Washington Post speculated on
whether he was miffed at some position President Reagan had on a
bill, or was delivering a snub to his main rival for the GOP
nomination, George Bush.
But when I asked, he told me it was neither; his wife, Elizabeth, was
out of town, and thanks to the terrible wounds he received in World
War II, he couldn’t put on a tuxedo by himself, `and I know I could
have asked one of my aides, but I’m not the kind of man who can
easily do that.’
Two years later, the vice president easily defeated him for the
nomination, ending his best shot at the White House. By the time he
did get nominated, he was, most voters felt, too old, and running
against a dynamic young president.
Now, years later, Bob Dole has produced a poignant and surprisingly
wonderful book that is mainly about his struggle to recover something
resembling a normal life after being wounded in the war.
This is not a conventional war memoir; he saw, in fact, little
combat. But he was seriously injured in Italy by a shell fragment
that ripped into his back, damaging his spine, three weeks before the
German surrender. He was at first completely paralyzed, and several
times was expected by his doctors to die.
Most felt Mr. Dole would never walk again, or regain the use of his
hands and arms. Yet he never gave up, and spent years fighting to
regain his body. He spent much of that time at what was then Percy
Jones Veterans’ Hospital in Battle Creek, Mich., where he came to
know two other wounded vets, Phil Hart and Daniel Inouye, who both
also became distinguished U.S. senators.
Eventually, thanks to a selfless physician who was a refugee from the
Armenian holocaust, and the donations of friends and neighbors in
tiny Russell, Kansas, Mr. Dole managed – after a long series of
complex, painful operations – to regain enough use of one arm to
function.
He went on to a highly distinguished career, but he wisely left
virtually all of that out of this book, which is special because it
speaks for perhaps the most neglected group of World War II veterans:
the severely disabled who, in virtually every case I have known
about, refused to give up. `Patience is an acquired trait, and I’ve
spent a lifetime impatiently trying to acquire it,’ he says, in
typical homespun, pithy, self-deprecating fashion.
`But few things will cause you to stop and focus on the moment, as
well as on the big picture, more than not being able to get out of
bed for six months; not feed yourself for more than a year. You learn
perhaps the toughest lesson in life: to wait … with a faith to
endure.’
He had that, all right. What is surprising is, in this short book he
seems to have captured perfectly what it was like to be a small-town
boy who grew up during the Depression, went off to war, and then came
home to cope with a daily challenge perhaps greater than any military
battle.
The story of how he did it is deeply inspiring. When this book went
to press Bob Dole was nearly 82, and was recovering from a nasty fall
that had left him, again, temporarily immobile.
Yet he was itching to get back on the road. `When you stop dreaming
about the future, and quit looking for new projects to do, you dry up
like a prune, and life becomes boring. I want to keep going and
growing.’
This may be the surprise blue-ribbon winner in all the books marking
the anniversary of the end of World War II this summer.
Unfortunately, it does nothing to clear up the two great mysteries
remaining about the life of Robert J. Dole. One is, why in the world
this distinguished statesman allowed himself to be made into a
pitchman for Viagra.
More significantly, reading this book I wondered what would have
happened if the senator had found the time to write his gripping,
warmly personal story in 1985? Might it have established a very
different kind of connection between America and Bob Dole?
My own belief is that he could well have been president. What Robert
J. Dole became instead was an authentic hero, in uniform and out,
which may, in the greater scheme of things, turn out to have been
even better.