{"id":16082,"date":"2025-04-07T15:56:54","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T15:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/?p=16082"},"modified":"2025-05-14T15:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T15:32:09","slug":"celebrating-the-american-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/spring-summer-2025\/celebrating-the-american-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating the American Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re searching for inspirational figures who may \u201creset your faith in humanity,\u201d author Robert B. Charles offers more than 50 of them in his new book, <\/em>Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness. Through powerful and personal stories, Charles celebrates individuals who embody the true American spirit\u2014personal freedom, boundless opportunity, and the courage to rise to the occasion, even when others will not.<\/em><\/p>\n

These stories are drawn from Charles\u2019 quintessential American life. Raised in rural Maine, he went on to study at Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Columbia University Law School. His career included service in all three branches of the U.S. government, volunteering on active duty on 9\/11, and becoming Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell in 2003. Today, he has returned to his roots in Maine, writing and fishing on the lake where he grew up.<\/em><\/p>\n

Be inspired\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

What follows is a book review of <\/em>Cherish America by Charles Todorich.<\/em><\/p>\n

An Exalted Form of Love<\/h3>\n

By Charles Todorich<\/p><\/p>\n

M<\/span>y first tears came on page 16, and it was the first successful organ transplant in history. It was a kidney given by 23-year-old Ron Herrick to his twin brother Richard.<\/p>\n

The idea was Ron\u2019s \u2013 Richard was dying of chronic nephritis \u2013 and when Ron broached kidney donation to Richard\u2019s doctor, he was told, \u201cImpossible. Never been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the idea planted a seed, and two months later, two days before Christmas at what is now Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital in Boston, Dr. Joseph Murray performed the first of over 450,000 successful kidney transplants. Dr. Murray received the 1990 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his efforts, and the Herrick twins lived long, productive lives.<\/p>\n

Ron Herrick was the 8th-grade math teacher of one Robert B. Charles \u2013 \u201cBobby\u201d \u2013 of Wayne, Maine, one of those out-of-the-way places where Maine folks say, \u201cYou can\u2019t get there from here.\u201d\u00a0Ron Herrick taught Bobby Charles that all problems \u2013 not just math problems \u2013 are soluble, even those that have never been solved before where the odds were worse than one in a million \u2013seemingly zero in infinity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Writing about turning zero-in-infinity impossibilities into one-in-a-million realities \u2013 and of how the virtuous and heroic acts of individuals ripple through time to the benefit of countless others \u2013 is the theme of Bobby Charles\u2019s splendid new book Cherish America: Stories of Character, Courage, and Kindness.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Herrick story is one of fifty-six in the book.<\/p>\n

Another is the 2007 saga of the Coast Guard cutter Sherman<\/em> returning to homeport after a hundred days at sea busting the drug trade. Out of nowhere came a monster storm with wild winds and 15 \u2013 20\u2019 swells.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, Sherman<\/em> passed a small 30\u2019 sailboat to port, from which came a woman\u2019s voice over the radio who said they were OK and didn\u2019t need help. Four hours later, that same woman\u2019s voice came, \u201cMayday, Mayday, Mayday<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the sailboat was now sixty miles distant, nearly out of radio range, in the heart of the storm, and night was falling. Without hesitation, Captain Charley Diaz, Coast Guard Academy Class of 1982, initiated an emergency left 30 degrees rudder, which turned Sherman<\/em> from four knots into the wind to broadside to the swells to riding the swells downwind at 30 knots.<\/p>\n

After more than an hour, they spotted the needle in a haystack sailboat. They conducted a miraculous small cutter boat rescue of the woman, who reported that two hours earlier, her husband had been swept overboard \u2013 without a life jacket. The only chance was Sherman\u2019s<\/em> helicopter, which had no retrieval basket. And the winds were wildly outside of acceptable launch tolerances. The aircrew said they could launch. They did.<\/p>\n

In his heart, Charley Diaz thought it was futile. It wasn\u2019t. An agonizing wait \u2026 then the radio crackled, \u201cOn the horizon \u2026 looks like a flashlight \u2026 it looks like a life raft \u2026 it looks like a hand \u2026 he\u2019s alive!\u201d The life raft had been washed overboard with the lost sailor, and it included a barely visible emergency light. Rescue!<\/em> Do you believe in miracles? Yes!<\/em><\/p>\n

This Al Michaels quote from the 1980 American Olympic hockey team win over the Soviet Union highlighted another Bobby Charles vignette (still 53 left). They span the panorama of the American experience \u2013 astronauts, soldiers, sailors, political leaders, regular folks, the Founders \u2013 individuals rising to the challenge of impossible situations and writing new verses in the epic poetry of American greatness. Like the Al Michaels quote that can describe both a rescue at sea and an unbelievable win in sports, the unifying and propulsive power of hope and belief \u2013 yes, in miracles \u2013 is foundational to American Exceptionalism.<\/p>\n

Also exceptional is Bobby Charles\u2019s writing. Given the chance to ride back seat in an F-16 Viper with an Air Force pilot – call sign \u201cElvis\u201d ( real last name was Presley ) – in dogfight training over Texas, Bobby describes the Viper as \u201crevolutionary \u2026 wingspan less than a telephone pole \u2026 shorter than a bowling alley \u2026 its winged rocket \u2026 \u201c a dart among spears\u201d \u2026 its 64,000 pounds of thrust providing \u201can osprey\u2019s flexibility,\u201d \u201ca swallow\u2019s maneuverability,\u201d a \u201cperegrine\u2019s dive and climb.\u201d Bobby\u2019s only mistake \u2013 a tuna sandwich and Gatorade preflight.<\/p>\n

But not many mistakes in Bobby Charles\u2019s life. From Ron Herrick\u2019s math class, it was Dartmouth, Oxford, the Reagan White House, Columbia Law School, a Harvard-associated teaching stint, New York law practice, the Bush \u201941 White House, naval intelligence officer, and Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell in the Bush \u201943 administration.<\/p>\n

Bobby was also a federal appeals court judicial clerk after graduating from Columbia Law School in 1987 \u2013 one of the few of that ilk who\u2019d never been on law review. The odds were against him being selected, so he studied the opinions of 300 federal judges and personalized a letter to each of them, which produced six interviews, the last from Reagan-appointed Judge Robert R. Beezer, USMC, who took him on.<\/p>\n

In writing about never giving up, Bobby Charles didn\u2019t just talk the talk. He walked the walk, which took him in almost Forrest Gump-like fashion to encounters with some of the most consequential figures of our time, producing many anecdotes.\nIn a 1992 visit with Ronald Reagan at his California home, the Gipper revealed to Bobby that the Queen Mother was the Reagans\u2019 favorite among the Royals. He tells of the famous Barbara Bush \u201cUp Yours\u201d toast to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin at an early \u201980s dinner at the Soviet Embassy.<\/p>\n

In 1997, he was in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev, and he was able to ask the former Soviet leader, \u201cDo you believe in God?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was Assistant Secretary of State for 450 days in the Bush \u201943 administration under Colin Powell, who \u201ctaught me more than all my schooling,\u201d notably his advice on honesty \u2013 \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to be a skunk at the garden party.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Bobby has enjoyed a quarter-century friendship with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin who wrote the foreword for Cherish America<\/em> and who recounted the \u201cUntold Story\u201d of how somehow he broke off the circuit breaker for the Eagle\u2019s ascent engine, which had to fire to get him and Neil Armstrong off the Moon and of how he improvised the connection with a felt tip pen. The engine fired, Armstrong and Aldrin escaped the clutches of the Moon\u2019s gravity, and Buzz was able in 2023, at age 93, to get married for the fourth time.<\/p>\n

But the real Hollywood comparison for Cherish America<\/em> is not Forrest Gump; it is George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra\u2019s 1946 holiday classic, It\u2019s A Wonderful Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no movie like it,\u201d writes Bobby Charles. Nor will there ever be because it caught lightning in a bottle, set in small-town postwar America, where almost all Americans deeply believed in God and Country and were receptive to notions of American Exceptionalism.<\/p>\n

When George Bailey considered suicide and said he wished he\u2019d never been born, Guardian Angel Clarence showed him what the world would be like had he not been. The brother he saved from drowning would have died a child, and the hundreds of men he saved during the war would have perished. His wife Mary would have never married, and their children were never born. Without George Bailey and his Savings and Loan, beautiful Bedford Falls would have become seedy Pottersville.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo man is a failure,\u201d said Clarence, \u201cwho has friends,\u201d and George\u2019s friends came to his financial rescue, just as his Savings and Loan had rescued them in ways large and small throughout their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cCherish\u201d is defined as \u201can exalted form of love.\u201d Bedford Falls cherished George Bailey. And Cherish America<\/em> cherishes America as an antidote to the nihilism of our age, like an explosion of sunlight streaming through once-darkened stained glass, illuminating anew the brilliant and magnificent mosaic of the American experience.<\/p>\n

Charles Todorich<\/a>, a 1970 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, holds an M.A. in American History from the University of Maryland and a J.D. from the University of Maine School of Law. He is the author of The Spirited Years: A History of the Antebellum Naval Academy<\/em> and has contributed to various publications, including Captains of the Old Steam Navy<\/em>, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings<\/em>, and the Portland Press Herald<\/em>. He lives in South Portland, Maine, and is currently building a log cabin in the woods of northeastern Maine.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Exalted Form of Love . . . Book Review of Cherish America…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2025","category-spring-summer-2025-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16082"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16367,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16082\/revisions\/16367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}