The Reyes Report

Remember the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan? My godfather was among the boys who stormed the beaches of Normandy. Later he was wounded, sent to Germany, and awarded the purple heart. I have that medal. Over the years, i’ve been given other bits of treasure … and it’s the greatest gift a man could offer, and hope to share: his legacy.

Today my godfather, Mike Pizza (really), will celebrate his 90th birthday. I dedicate this blog post to him, and use it to share with you one of his treasures: a speech he gave a long, long time ago as he traveled to his Masonic brothers. Enjoy.

His handwritten sheets begin with a newspaper clipping, source unnamed.

Let’s Dare to Be Square

This country was built by men who, in the hipster’s derisive term, were “squares” — who believed in such things as pride, patriotism, loyalty and even hard work. Can we afford not to emulate them?

This becomes the thesis. On eight yellowed sheets of paper, his all-caps, elderly penmanship scrawls across the page. It tells a story of bravery, a plea for passion and attempt to give us all a kick in the pants. Though the message and some of his references are dated, I believe you’ll find the message and hope as true today as it was then. Please join me in looking back .. and perhaps we can look forward together, to a day when we celebrate our 90th birthdays, and can look back on wishes like these as dated and irrelevant because today, it is simply how we operate.

Back in our grandparents day the word “square” was one of the finest words in our language: you gave a man a ‘square deal’ if you were honest and you gave him a ‘square meal’ if he was hungry; you stood ‘fore square’ for right, as you saw it; when you got out of debt you were ‘square with the world;’ you could look a fellow man ‘square in the eye.’ Then, a lot of strange characters got a hold of this honest, wholesome word and bent it out of shape.

Now everyone knows what a square is: he’s the man who never learned to get away with it. A joe who volunteers when he doesn’t have to; a guy who gets kicks from trying to do something better than anybody else can; a boob who gets so lost in his work that he has to be reminded to go home; a guy who gets all choked up when the band plays America the Beautiful. A square is strictly from Squaresville; his tribe isn’t doing too well in the current climate. He doesn’t fit neatly into the group of corner cutters, sharp shooters, goof offs. He is burdened down with old fashioned ideas of honesty, loyalty, courage and thrift. And he may already by on his way to extinction.

He and all the rest of us are living in quite a different country today from the one we were taught to love, for example, we have been gullible patrons of the idea that our ancient disciplines should be abandoned as too stark for the poor feeble souls that we are. Our colleges are loaded with youngsters who are hardly prepared for high schools, who cannot do simple arithmetic or spell simple words. The idea was that the dull discipline of the 3 R’s was disturbing Little Johnny’s ego. We ought to know by now that there is no learning without discipline.

But todays new books are being thrown together by new writers who never bothered to learn to write. Our museums are exhibiting paintings by people who never learned to paint. It used to be a sort of a joke that you could not tell the top from the bottom – but recently a museum did hang a bit of modern art upside down, it was days before the error was discovered — I still don’t know how they knew.

We refer to our humor as sick, sick, sick and it is, is, is. Mothers used to get cards on Monther’s Day expressing in some way the fact that she was loved and wanted. Now she is lucky if she gets a card of Whistler’s Mother flat on her back with a caption that says ‘You’re not the only one who’s off her rocker.”

This comment I suppose will mark me a square, but if it does, I will be in pretty good company. For this country was discovered, put together, fought for and saved by squares. It is easy to prove that most of our national heros were squares, simply by thinking what they might have said had they not been squares:

• Nathan Hale: “Me? Spy on the British? Are you trying to be funny? Do you know what they do to spies they catch? I’ll give you a news flash chum, they hang them!”
• Patrick Henry: “Sure, I’m for liberty. But we have to be realistic. We’re a pretty small outfit, if we start pushing the British around someone’s going to get hurt.”
• Paul Revere: “What do you mean? Me, ride around through every middlesex town and village in the middle of the night? Am I the only one in Boston with a horse?”

Perhaps it is significant that what such men actually did say has been left out of our new school books. A recent survey of school history books issued before 1920 compared with those issued since show Nathan Hale said “I only regret that I have one life to give to my country” in 11 of the old texts and only one of the new. Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death” in 12 of the earlier 14 texts, but only 3 in the recent 45 new ones. But John Paul Jone’s set the record, he said “I have not yet begun to fight” in nine of the old books, and in none of the new. Maybe these aggressive and nationalistic statements were square, but there are lessons to be learned in all of them and school books are for the learning. Arnold Toynbee, the historian, says that of 21 civilizations, 19 perished not from external conquest, but from evaporation of belief from within.

Today our country still has a choice. I believe it is going back to its old beliefs in such things as ideas, pride, patriotism, loyalty, devotion and even hard work. Sheer head counting seems to indicate that people are beginning to struggle for better things. 20 years ago half of us belonged to churches. Today, 63 percent of us do. Expenditures on cultural activities have increased 70 percent in the past ten years to a total of more than three billion dollars. The percentage of our college-age population actually attending college is nine times higher than it was at the turn of the century.

And our nation has a whole new set of heros named Glenn and Grissom and Shepard, named Carpentar, Shirrea and Cooper. The towns they came from have nice names like Bolder, East Derby, New Concord, Mitchell, Oradell, Shawnee. These lads apparently lived too far from the big city and grew up to be squares. For who but a square would volunteer his life for his country’s good? They are not even ashamed of their feelings. John Glenn says he gets a funny feeling down inside when he sees the flag go by. Imagine that! He’s proud of his small town, proud of his small college, proud he belongs to the YMCA. I hope that some of him rubs off on to the next generation, for the forces of conformity are still strong.

Too many of us are still sitting it out instead of sweating it out. Too many of us haven’t got the guts to stand up straight and dare to be square.

Happy Birthday Uncle Mike. May your words continue to inspire the squares in all of us.