JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

All of us have a batch of where-was-I-when-it-happened days that

become vivid once a year and then recede. None is more vivid to me than

Pearl Harbor Day, which took place 59 years ago today and probably had a

greater impact on my life than any other single event. I suspect a large

part of my generation would say the same thing, because the attack that

day set in motion forces that not only commanded our next four years but

indirectly the rest of our lives. Forces that probably will never be

repeated in the same manner in this nation again.

I thought about this during a dinner conversation my wife and I had

last weekend with one of my former students and his wife. It came as an

odd sort of revelation to me that three of the people around our table --

and their children and grandchildren -- would never experience the set of

circumstances that created what Tom Brokaw rather ingenuously called “The

Greatest Generation.” Thus, the different ways in which succeeding

generations address such abstractions as patriotism and duty to country

has nothing to do with any lack of respect but rather with the drastic

changes that have taken place since World War II -- technological and

social -- and have conditioned the manner in which a sense of country and

history are inculcated in new generations.

On this day 59 years ago, while looking with growing consternation at

the successful aggression of the Germans in Europe, we were blindsided by

another empire out to destroy us. I got that word while eating lunch at a

boarding house near the campus of the University of Missouri. One of our

fellow diners, his face ashen, called us from the table to a radio where

Franklin Roosevelt was describing this “day of infamy.”

We all knew instantly what was going to be required of us. Wars

weren’t begun and ended with the atom bomb then. They were long,

desperate, slogging years of pushing the enemy back, and we had time on

our side. True, that would happen again in Korea and Vietnam. But never

again with the nation totally, enthusiastically and emotionally

supporting its armed forces. We had a powerful sense of that unity on the

first Pearl Harbor Day as we gathered on the front porch of our boarding

house to put school aside and talk about how the upcoming Christmas break

might be the last one we would spend at home until we took care of this

matter.

If that all sounds wonderfully -- and perhaps incredibly -- naive, it

was. But that’s who we were, and those were the times in which we lived.

That moment was quite unique in our history, and trying to describe it to

someone who didn’t experience it is as difficult today as trying to

describe middle-class bread lines during the Great Depression. Nothing in

our experience since provides a frame of reference in which to place

these events.

So, today, I’ll remember huddling around a radio in a Columbia, Mo.,

boarding house with my college friends and listening to the news that

would change all of our lives. And maybe I’ll tip a glass in their

direction and wonder what happened to them.

Meanwhile, back at the farm . . .

I attended a coming-out party in Costa Mesa on Saturday that none of

you who own dogs should have missed -- or even those of you who don’t own

dogs but like them. The event was the reopening of the Costa Mesa Bark

Park, and it was an exuberant testimony to the efforts of a group of

dedicated people. And perhaps I may be pardoned a little family pride

because my daughter, Patt, was an integral part of the team that brought

this off under frequently difficult circumstances.

The results are altogether splendid. The new grass is a thick green

carpet, shimmering evidence of the Bark Park’s wisdom in resisting

efforts of City Hall to cover the area with wood chips. The fences are

new and stout, the sprinklers actually sprinkle, and the new concrete

walkways are not only attractive but practical.

The new entranceway is paved with individual tiles inscribed with the

names of local dogs whose owners kicked in up to $40 to thus honor their

pets. My ditsy dachshund, Coco, is there, which seemed only fair in view

of the tile inscribed to me at Anaheim Stadium. We’re not only the same

age but have been similarly honored.

All this came about because of the determination, staying power and

creativity of a group of local residents who spent years patiently

threading their way through legal and political channels. They raised

their own support funds while they sought the concessions necessary to

produce the facility put on display. But they are never home free. New

benches, for example, wait patiently in a nearby garage until funds can

be raised to have them installed.

But that didn’t delay inauguration day when the grounds were full of

booths offering everything from a dog shrink to a cotton and Christmas

tree backdrop for pictures with pets. I came home with a Bark Park

calendar that has a picture of Coco in March, so she is now one up on me.

I also brought home a carton of “Forchewin’ Cookies.” She has rightly

shown little interest in the fortunes, which tend to such things as “the

paws that refreshes.” But she likes the cookies.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.