It was noted in the article a couple of weeks ago entitled “Blueprint for ARPA Funds” that the primary focus for disseminating the $22 million federal grant funds to our area would be for generational projects. Commissioner Metzger emphasized this again at the Lycoming County Commissioners Meeting on February 9th. The commissioners keep mentioning this and also seeking to justify it because the concept is rather unusual in our day and age. We live in a society where everything is right now. History is relegated to a memory hole. As Henry Ford so eloquently stated it, “History is more or less bunk.” For those who are not quite familiar with the word ‘bunk,’ it means nonsense, stupid, having no value.
Yet, without history, we have no perspective. Since Webb Weekly readers enjoy sports, let’s take a recent example of the limited public memory. A poll was taken this year by Morning Consult, a prestigious global intelligence company, asking Americans to determine who was the greatest American athlete of all time. Get this — of ALL TIME! The top vote-getter was Michael Jordan with 16 percent; Tom Brady came in second place with 9 percent. The other 75 percent of voters offered many contestants for America’s Greatest GOAT (Greatest of all Time); Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, and Wayne Gretzky, to name just a few. There were only two athletes, Muhammed Ali, and Babe Ruth, that could be considered from another generation.
Granted that all these were tremendous athletes, but the answer to the question of the greatest American athlete of all time is unquestionably — Jim Thorpe. Experts have even considered Thorpe to be the greatest athlete in the world. In 1950, the Associated Press voted him the greatest athlete of the half-century. In 2001, ABC’s Wide World of Sports crowned him the “Greatest Athlete of the Century.”
Yet, this man did not even get enough votes to hit a one percent threshold to be counted in this recent poll. Michael Jordan is considered the world’s greatest athlete, but MJ could not even get out of the minor leagues when he tried to play professional baseball. Jim Thorpe was an Olympian track and field medalist played professional baseball, football, and even basketball! In fact, he even played professional hockey for a short time. How does a person like this not even get an honorable mention as the greatest athlete of all time? Or even Jackie Robinson — a ground-breaking Hall of Fame baseball player who also competed in football, basketball, tennis, and track and excelled in all of them. Not even any love for this guy? Really?
The reason for this athletic amnesia is because the focus is on the “now.” Yesterday is old news. Who cares about what happened in the past? Move along, move along, nothing to see; that’s done and gone. In business psychology, it is called the “tyranny of the urgent.” We are so totally focused with the present situation we cannot bring ourselves to look at the past.
Yet, it was the past that got us to where we are in the present. Why is inflation so high? Why is immigration out of control? What are crime rates up? Every single issue we wrestle with today has a root from the past. But here is the catch — history is not there for us to like or dislike. History is not ours to change or destroy. It is there for us to learn from. Failure to do so is a prescription for failure. James Bond Stockdale was a United States Navy vice admiral, and aviator awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War, during which he was a prisoner of war for over seven years. Stockdale was the most senior naval officer held captive in Hanoi, North Vietnam. He once stated, “The single most important foundation for any leader is a solid academic background in history. That discipline gives perspective to the problems of the present and drives home the point that there is really very little new under the sun.”
Say what you want about our three Lycoming County Commissioners, but on this point, they got it right. They appreciate history because they know they are making history.
