PBS Series, "The Roosevelts," Shows Us What We Need

Ken Burns' wonderful series on PBS about Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt pointed to one of the things we all need to think about  ... helping others. The Roosevelts didn't have to worry about money for their next meal, and they could have gone through life piling up money and concerning themselves solely with their own lives, especially Franklin, who had been left badly crippled by polio when he was only 39. Instead, the three Roosevelts chose to try to help others and, thus, their nation. They all took abuse from the forces of greed, selfishness and hate aligned against them, but they persevered, and the United States is a far better place for their having lived. Like all of us, the Roosevelts weren't perfect, but their faults paled in comparison to the good things they did, or helped to bring about.

Now in our modern times, when the lives of those three Roosevelts were extinguished long ago, their legacies are seriously under attack, perhaps more than when they were alive and working to attain the things that have had them seen as a great part of American history. At least they were able to fight for and defend their ideas back in their respective lifetimes, but now it is up to us to speak for them and to do battle with the same forces of greed, selfishness and hate they combated. The faces of these opponents may have changed, but the dark souls are still the same as those of more than a hundred years ago, when Teddy Roosevelt led major efforts to break up large corporations, and the concentrated wealth and power of those corporations, and to ban corporate money from elections. They are the same dark souls battled by Franklin Roosevelt during his efforts to help the nation recover from its worse economic calamity ever, and to provide rights, assistance and some sense of income security and dignity to America's workers, poor and elderly. They are the same dark souls who detested Eleanor Roosevelt for her championing of the rights of black Americans and for all poor Americans, and for providing a shining example to the nation's women by daring to be a leader and a spokesperson for a number of causes, and demonstrating to men that women could be leaders too, and that America's women would be taking on new roles in American life, roles long the exclusive preserves of men.

My father was a staunch Republican, but toward the end of his life in the late 1990s, he began to soften his support for the GOP. The Republican takeover of Congress during the 1994 election showed him how some of the GOP policies were not being pushed to help people like him. He also had a simultaneous softening toward Democrats,* so much so, that he related a story to me he had never before mentioned. I can't remember all of the details, but his grandmother was elderly and ill and she had some kind of application in for assistance, and I'm not even sure it was some federal assistance. My great grandfather had died during the mid 1930s, and he had spent his life working in coalmines, so it might have had to do with his former work, as Eleanor Roosevelt took up the cause of coal miners and their families. In those times, Social Security had just started, and if the breadwinner of a family died, usually the husband back then, the family or surviving spouse was apt to be destitute, even in old age. Well my dad was serving in the Pacific during World War Two, and his grandmother couldn't finalize what ever this matter was, so he wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt explaining the situation. He said Mrs. Roosevelt took up my great grandmother's cause and helped to resolve it. To this day, I believe he had never mentioned the story up to that point, because he didn't want to say that he had sought help from a Democrat, and GOT IT!

We sure need some modern Roosevelts. Where are they?

* He even told me he didn't like the Republican attempts to oust President Bill Clinton from office with the impeachment and trial they were pursuing at that time, a statement which nearly saw me fall off of my chair.

WORD HISTORY:
Watch-This word is closely related to "wake" (not the water disturbance type) and "awaken;" in fact, I suppose you could say "watch" and "wake" are really the same word; at least long ago that was true, and the forms are difficult to separate, so I'll try to keep it as relevant as possible to just "watch." Both the noun and verb forms come from the same source. The word goes back to Indo European "weg/wek," which had the notion of "be active, lively." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "wakojana(n)/wakjana(n), with the meaning, "to wake up, to awaken, to be awake," as well as the extended meaning "be awake for the purpose of guarding." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "waecce," the noun form, meaning, "a watch, a vigil," from the idea of "remaining awake, being awake and on guard." This then became "wacche," before the modern form. "Apparently" the later additional meaning of "small implement to keep time" seems to have developed in the 1400s from the notion of it "waking" you, not because you "watch" or look at it. Again, you must remember, the actual meaning of the word had to do with "wake, awake, awaken," and its German relative for an alarm clock is a "Wecker," literally a "waker." The Old Germanic forms also gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) the verb form "waeccan," meaning "to wake," with the secondary "to watch." This then became "wacchen," before the modern form. Just as "watch" and "wake" are closely linked in English, the same is often true in the other Germanic languages, making it very difficult to list the various forms, so I'm going to keep this very limited to forms that are more pointed to "watch," even though they may also have meanings related to "wake," but many forms in the other Germanic languages have to do with the meaning "wake." German has the noun "Wache" (all German nouns are capitalized), which means "guard duty" (see also with Dutch and Low German below) and German "Wächter," means "watchman," as does German "Wachmann" (which in some regions also meant "policeman," although I believe that meaning is now rare). German also has the verb "wachen," which means "to be awake" (a meaning not as common nowadays), but like its English cousin also "to keep watch" (also not as common anymore). German, Low German and Dutch have the noun "wacht," meaning "guard duty," and Dutch has the verb "waken," meaning "to watch," but also " to wake." West Frisian has "(be)weitser," meaning "watchman," and "(be)weitsje," meaning "to guard, to watch." Forms in the other Germanic languages relate to the "wake'' meaning.