America’s Historian, David McCullough (1933 - 2022)

Feeling sentimental, even sad, upon learning of the death of one’s favorite writer is perhaps an anachronism. Americans are far more “tuned -in” to television characters, movie stars, and famous singers. I well remember feeling somewhat sorrowful as a new rendition of Over the Rainbow played while we watched the death of ER’s Dr. Mark Green. And it has been said that America coalesces like no other time when a famous singer dies: Elvis, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Prince, etc. They don’t often seem to be individuals one would want one’s children to look up to, but we all love their songs which played in the soundtrack of our lives. For me that time will come when Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson, now 80, leaves us.

But a historian? A writer? Who’d miss them, personally, one might ask. Well, today, I learned of the death at 89 of the great David McCullough, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and the hearts of many people who prefer the crack of a book to the click of a remote.

Author of such landmark works as Truman, John Adams, The Great Bridge, 1776, The Greater Journey (i.e., several Americans in Paris), The Pioneers (his last book), and several more, including my personal favorites, The Wright Brothers and The American Spirit: Who We Are and What we Stand For, McCullough was peerless.

With the help of long-time researcher Mike Hill and his self proclaimed “editor in chief,” wife Rosalee, he captured American history not just as a collection of facts, but as a tapestry of knowledge and of emotion. David (one tires of spelling out McCullough) spent literal years working on each book, sequestered away in library research rooms, musty basements, and dusty museum attics.

Rosalee died this past June. He made it only another month or so. I wonder if he just found nothing left without her. Both born in 1933, David said both he and his wife were fortunate as that year had the lowest number of births in the U. S. in the century.

McCullough dearly loved researching and studying his subjects, and he treated them as human, whether Orville and Wilbur Wright simply being the hardworking and creative sons of a widowered minister, or Adams being the only non-slave-owning Founder, or Truman mowing his own lawn after serving as president, and welcoming a passer-by into the house who did not recognize him. David brought out the lofty from the common, and vice versa.

Some McCullough thoughts:

The Founders did not know they were living in the past. They were living in the present, their present; and they had no idea how it would turn out, but they persevered, hopefully.

Jefferson wrote “in the course of human events.” These people were human, they were neither super human nor supermen, and they did not have super knowledge.

And McCullough uncovered in his research some very interesting and little known facts about our history. For instance, in the many letters written back and forth between John and Abigail Adams, the future president hoped to calm her worries: “We cannot guarantee success, but we can do something better, we can deserve it.”

But David did not rest there. Upon seeing that same thought in a writing by George Washington, he dug deeper, pulling his copy of Bartlett’s off the shelf, where he learned that

both Founders borrowed the phrase from a popular play at the time, in fact a British play, Cato, by Jospeh Addison. Not to be outdone, Nathan Hale got his famous “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country” from the same play. The Colonists were turning the Brits’ very words back against them.

McCullough was aghast at how the respect for and the practice of history has declined in America. He shared stories often of a college student who told him that until she heard him speak she had no idea that the original Thirteen Colonies were all on the east coast. And of another who asked him if, other than John Adams and Harry Truman, had he interviewed any other presidents.

And he implored that the way to bring back America is to bring back the family dinner table, where families historically shared stories, and children got to know history, subjects, issues.

The New York Times wrote today: “Mr. McCullough made no secret of his admiration for men and women who were known not only for achievement but also for their courage and independence, and for principles that put the greater good above personal ambition.”

McCullough always said that he chose his projects when there was no book extant about the subject which he wanted to read . . . so he wrote one. And thus learned as he taught.

Early in his career he declined to write about the San Francisco fire as a follow-up to his excellent book about the Johnstown flood, because, as he humorously explained, he did not want to be typecast as “Bad News McCullough.”

Writing in a specially equipped and insulated office in back of his Martha‘s Vineyard home, as does another of my favorite writers, John Grisham, near Charlottesville, Virginia, David McCullough was a national treasure, a look back in time. But while Grisham writes every book on the same desktop computer, one not connected to the internet, McCullough took it one step further, writing on a manual typewriter, the kind with the glass covered keys.

McCullough was known for his voice almost as much as for his pen, serving as the narrator for the Ken Burns PBS documentary about the War Between the States, better known in history and on television as The Civil War. He loved to tell a humorous story of shopping for necessities, including cashews, at a local grocery store during a multi-day blizzard, when a young stock clerk asked the writer if he’d ever been on television, having recognized the voice.

I learned only a couple years ago that many of McCullough’s speeches - he was quite in demand - are available on YouTube, and have since listened to more than several, often in the late hours after my family have gone to sleep. His voice was amazingly comforting. He loved an audience and was truly an affable man.

I also learned from his speeches that we disagree, somewhat strongly, on matters of politics, in this century, at least. But anyone who cannot have a trusted friend, a valued admiration, even if only via the printed and spoken word, with someone with whom he disagrees politically is truly limiting himself and his horizons.

And David McCullough enjoyed laughing at himself.

Rosalee once read an early draft of one of her husband’s books and remarked that it was very good, but that it had one awkward sentence. He read the sentence, and protested. She maintained her position, but he did not change it. Later, when the book was reviewed by Gore Vidal, he wrote that McCullough told good stories but was not a particularly good writer. “For example, consider this sentence.”

RIP David. I will miss you greatly.