A good friend told me today that she didn’t see the purpose of the WWII entries in my blog and didn’t understand that anyone would be interested except members of my family, because they would know personally the characters in the letters. That comment made me wonder if history books on shelves all over the country might be of little or no interest or value, since people don’t know the characters “personally.” The more I thought about it, the more I decided that personalizing the wider drama of war time only intensifies the background of world conflict when it is funneled down to a family and the smaller parts they play on the wider stage of world events.
My motive was to personalize that era of WWII through the eyes of a particular but not extraordinary family. Anyone who wants to know the facts of that time can get a history book or find data on line….but to read actual letters by two young people whose lives have been swallowed up by those world events in sequence through the frightening and perilous period of 1941-1945 provides a sense of drama that can be touching but not found in any American history book. I have not been able to find any other source of 127 actual letters through that time in any other place. I believe that’s what makes the project special. The daily thoughts of ordinary people swept up by the war are as interesting as any battle facts. Such things, at least for me, bring history to life and give it a human face. THAT is my purpose. Of course, I won’t use all 127 letters, but the flavor of the ones I am using seems to be reaching people’s interest and experience of war in the most universal sense. The entries also speak of communication itself and the importance of personal letters, those relics of another time that have now all but been replaced by gang-mail, e-mail, texting, cell phone drivel, and anonymous greeting cards. All communication has value, especially when it represents some thread in the wider tapestry that connects us all in time of crisis or celebration.
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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