Joe Hardman, in retirement, works as a volunteer guide at the Wright Brothers national park in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. There, before large groups of visitors, he explains how Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903 became the first persons to take flight in a motor-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine.
The subject is fascinating in itself: two Ohio bicycle-shop mechanics who dreamed of human flight managing to pull it off and achieving undying reputation. But Joe makes it all the more compelling as he shares with people of all ages this typically American story. Standing in front of two life-size replicas of the original airplanes, Joe explains in expert detail the engineering behind the Wrights’ great feat and also the human drama.
As a tourist myself last week, I listened to Joe with fascination. Afterward I asked this 70-year-old how he had acquired such knowledge. “They gave me a five-foot shelf of books,” he explained. In others words, his was no canned speech repeated over and over; rather, he had studied his subject and mastered it enough to talk about a wide variety of materials and to answer a wide range of questions.
In his earlier career, Joe told me, he had been a foreign service officer for the United States and then a manager of the Fulbright program in the federal education department. So he brings much experience and sophistication to his volunteer position in Kitty Hawk. No wonder he carries off his teaching role with such aplomb.
Joe Hardman, though outstanding for his competence, was only one of several elder citizens whom my wife and I encountered on this vacation trip. At Antietam, the Civil War battle site, we found a similarly well-qualified guide in Gary Delphey. This gentleman told me that he is a retired bank officer who now contributes his time to public service.
From a position on a porch looking out over the fields where the Union and Confederate armies clashed repeatedly in 1862, this seasoned guide explained the ebb and flow of the battle. Inevitably the other listeners and I visualized the strategy of Robert E. Lee and the countermoves of Union General McClellan. Even though my sympathies were with the North, I thrilled to the crucial intervention of General A. P. Hill, who force-marched his troops from Harpers Ferry, and saved the day for the Rebels.
At Gettysburg, veteran guides abounded. Though our tour around miles of battlefield took place in our own car, before setting out we noted the human resources available. I remember asking one man of mature years who was dressed in a National Park Service uniform if he was a volunteer. His one-word answer amused me: “Almost.”
At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent home near Charlottesville, Virginia, our guide was Bess Kane, a woman who possessed detailed knowledge both about the house and about its owner. The range and sophistication of her lore impressed me. Only last year I had read American Sphinx, the biography of Jefferson written by the Mount Holyoke College professor Joseph Ellis, so I was well-positioned to recognize a skilled presentation.
What a welcome change all of these superb talks represent! They strike a brilliant contrast with the spiels of the past, parroted by guides who knew precious little about their subject. But I suspect there may be more to it than that.
It seems to me that the guides we encountered on the vacation tour are people who love their country’s history and wish to pass it on to others, young and old. They have imbued themselves with the events of America’s past and have come to value what we as a nation have experienced on our way through history.
Though they approach their official duties seriously, they seem to go beyond mere duty and take pleasure in sharing with others the knowledge they have acquired through study and reflection. In doing so, they have assumed a role in society that befits older people. Not only do they hand on a tradition vital to our common life but they also offer some evaluation of that history, letting us know what is important and why.
In doing so on a large public stage before huge numbers of people who come from all over this country and, indeed, the world, these guides help us lay more secure hold of our traditions. They help bring to vivid life the pages of history books that previously may have remained dry documents for us.
These veteran guides also help us flesh out the folktales that we learned long ago, correct them, and give them a local habitation and a name. And they seem to relish what they are doing. Gary Delphey, the Antietam guide, told me of his pleasure: “I enjoy it. It’s the least I can do for those fellows who sacrificed so much so long ago.”
Richard Griffin