Most political observers would love to be able to command our state leaders – governor, councilors, senators and representatives – to take some action or other: on schools, wages, health care, the environment, guns or taxes. My wish is more modest: I would like each, alone, to climb up alongside Concord’s water tower and then take a short jaunt into Winant Park and then to pause at the place where the trees have been cut, allowing a view of our State House.
What I hope each of them will notice, as they contemplate their important roles within its walls, is not the grandeur of the massive granite structure, nor the height and brilliance of its golden dome, as they might in viewing it from the corner of Capitol and State streets.
What they will see, instead, is just how small and insignificant the dome appears from this outlook on the Winant trail: about the size of a small sapling compared with the vastness of the trees that hem it in from all sides.
I have just viewed this sight during a Christmas Day stroll in late afternoon while attempting to walk off too much feasting. I was shocked at how small our State House appeared, and I can only guess how much less grand it will appear when the trees are leafed out.
What will impress is the grandeur of nature and of the relative insignificance of man’s creations when placed next to nature’s magnificence.
Of course, this particular viewpoint is grossly misleading. Human beings have made their presence felt upon the natural world to a frightful and disheartening extent. We have made deserts out of rain forests, filled the ocean with plastic wastes, pumped trillions of tons of carbon into our atmosphere and killed off at least 80 percent of the wild creatures that existed in the days of our grandparents.
We continue our quest to subjugate nature for short-term financial gain and to feed our over-populated species at the expense of all others.
But this is not just another environmental harangue. What I would wish for the leaders of our body politic to experience is that quality that so defined the man whose name adorns these woods and trails. John “Gil” Winant was a very great man whose humility kept pace with his astonishing courage and quiet heroism. As all who read the book Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour by Lynne Olson will discover, our former governor probably did more to save Britain from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi tyranny than any other American, earning their deepest gratitude.
While isolationists and “America Firsters” were clamoring for us to stay out of “Europe’s mess,” Winant (who as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador to Great Britain had replaced the Hitler apologist Joseph Kennedy) worked tirelessly to help the Brits hang on during the Blitz and have faith that an America that shared so many values about human dignity would finally come to their aid, as they stood alone to face the fascist menace.
His example of putting humane and democratic values above narrow nationalism – even at a time when the fascist threat to civilization was even greater than it is today – should make us all take pause and reflect on where America’s “greatness” truly resides.
Gil Winant’s heroism was followed, in the post-war era, by private anguish that led to his suicide in 1947, a denouement that has largely obscured his place in our history. But nothing can diminish the magnitude of his gifts, humility being far from the least of them.
Our State House lawn is dominated by four statues of great (as in Daniel Webster) and not-so-great (as in Franklin Pierce) men, most of whose chests are thrust outward, symbolic of their sense of self-importance. On the lawn of the State Library stands a newer and very different statue of a man holding his hat in one hand and extending his other hand in polite friendship and generosity toward his fellow human beings.
So even if our governor, councilors, senators and state reps cannot find their way up the trail to gaze down at our State House in humble appreciation of nature’s preeminence, they might take a moment to sit on the bench, in the lea of Gil Winant’s friendly demeanor, and touch base with their own humility.
(Robert L. Fried of Concord is a retired educator who is now a writer, gardener and tinkerer. He can be reached by email at rob.fried@gmail.com.)