Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410100014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-11 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Ray Cox
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That didn't make it any easier to take, seeing loathesome Nazi flags, swastikas afluttering, being carried by black-suited young women, attired to look like Hitler's storm troopers.
Not in Lynchburg, that grand old antebellum town where my grandmother was born and grew up, where I once went to high school.
Not in City Stadium.
Not in the United States of America.
This was a tribute to veterans of World War II, said Roger Roberts, the principal of Heritage High School, whose marching band had produced the show.
``It's meant as a historical lesson,'' he said. ``Obviously, you can't portray World War II without that element.''
Perhaps.
The show, which has now run four times, twice at band competitions where the honors rolled in, had been viewed in advance by leaders of the Lynchburg Jewish community and by the superintendent of schools, James McCormick, Roberts said.
``It was viewed positively,'' Roberts said.
In a manner of speaking.
``We thought that it could be offensive to some people but chose not to make an issue of it,`` said Marc Schewel of Lynchburg, who is the state chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith.
Maybe those who viewed it ``positively'' have stronger stomachs than I.
This depiction, with the glory of brass band arrangement and elaborate choreography, had honorable intentions, no doubt about that. But the message, for some, was, shall we say, lost in the translation. Kind of like a tribute to the civil rights movement might have riled some folks if it began with guys dressed in white bed sheets and carrying Confederate flags.
Young reporters from the Cave Spring High paper had called the previous week to question the display of visual poison. Roberts patiently explained to them that no offense was intended.
So even expecting to see it, as I did last week when Pulaski County paid a visit to City Stadium, it was difficult to reconcile the brandishing of a banner that millions worldwide died to ensure never would be raised again. Really, I hoped the the award-winning Heritage band would spare us a repeat performance.
Wrong as the flat Earth theory. Out came the black uniforms. Up went the swastikas.
Along with the somber music and nauseating flags came a heaping dose of red white and blue and patriotism. The girls even changed from their storm trooper duds to the olive and khaki of U.S. soldiers. Stirring stuff, mostly, if you overlooked the prelude.
Apparently alerted to sensitivities raised the previous week, the public address announcer had intoned by way of an introduction, ``Please take this in the context that it was meant.''
Honest, I tried.
And I still felt like I'd just eaten a plate of spoiled oysters.
My father was a veteran. Almost lost all his toes to frostbite sitting in a foxhole during the Battle of the Bulge in the bitter Belgian winter of 1944-45. Could have had his head blown off.
For that so I can go to a football game in Lynchburg and see the swastika raised anew?
Shaken isn't the word for the way I felt. Bet I wasn't the only one.
Later that night I'm talking to a guy I know and like. The halftime show was being discussed. He didn't think much of it either.
Then, sort of out of nowhere, he says:
``A multicultural society is a weak society.''
``What do you mean by that?'' I said.
``You doubt it, check out the mess they have in Fairfax County now,'' he said.
Puzzled, I didn't bother to mention to him that Fairfax County has the highest per capita income in the country. Somebody must be doing something right up there.
``I'm Irish and proud of it,'' he said.
Funny that you mention that, I told him, because white Anglo-Saxon Protestants - my ancestors - had worked for the better part of the 19th century to exclude Irish immigrants and, failing that, to keep them from advancing in society once they had arrived. My forebears were wrong, of course. Dead wrong.
My Irish friend missed the point.
``Those Irish people came to America because they wanted to work, not because they wanted a welfare handout.''
Absolutely. Now I get it. People denied a legal means of immigration are leaping into surging Caribbean seas with nothing more than some Popsicle sticks and soda cans between them and the sharks so they can go stand in a line at the welfare office in Miami.
Tell you the truth, from what I can tell, the vast majority of immigrants who come to this country come for the same reason they always have. To get away from hoods with big guns or other menaces so as to make a better life for themselves in the greatest nation the world has ever known.
Nobody I know wants the sort of chaos they have in places like Quebec and the former Yugoslavia. In the United States, we figured out a way to do the multicultural gig right, though.
It bears repeating for the zillionth time that save for the American Indians, somebody in all our families first arrived here by boat or plane. Every single one.
Usually, sports is the topic in this space and none of this has a whole lot to do with sports. Yet it does strike me that those who argue against a multicultural society must not think much of our native-grown games like football, baseball and basketball.
For where would football be without a Jim Thorpe, a Nagurski, a Jimmy Brown? Or baseball without a Greenberg, a DiMaggio, a Koufax, a Mays? Or basketball without a Mikan, a Baylor, or an Abdul-Jabbar?
People from many cultures made our sports and our society. It's the American way.
Always was, always will be.
Ray Cox is a Roanoke Times & World-News sportswriter.
by CNB