Post by Tyler Norris

When I think of America’s promise, I think of my grandfather. Born in Idaho, one of seven children, Myron Q. Hale lost his father at thirteen and grew up on the edge of poverty. At twenty, he joined the Naval Air Corps during World War II — his squadron the first at Iwo Jima — and every month sent his paycheck home to his widowed mother. The country he helped deliver from totalitarianism gave something back: a graduate education under the GI Bill, a professorship, a family, a place in the middle class. He later marched on Washington with Dr. King in 1963 and stood against a war he believed unjust. I don’t think he’d recognize the direction our country has taken, but I don’t believe he would have despaired, either. He knew, because he lived it, that America’s promise isn’t guaranteed — it is something each generation must earn back.