A Couple Good Books About Good People … It’s summer time, and the living is easy. There’s time for reading. Here’s a couple books about noteworthy Virginians, which I recommend. The first is “In the Garden of the Beasts,” written by Erik Larson. It’s the biography of William E. Dodd, the American ambassador to Hitler’s Germnay in the 1930′s. Dodd was a Virginian, raised in Loudoun County. He had an estate in Round Hill, which today is the site of Stoneleigh Golf Course. Dodd was an old-fashioned academic, who specialized in Southern history and idolized Woodrow Wilson. His sole connection to Germany was the fact he lived there as a college student and spoke German. At first blush, he was wildly overmatched by The Third Reich, which had a breadth of evil far beyond academic abstractions. But Dodd was no shrinking violet in Germnay. He drove Goebbels and the other Nazis crazy with his open criticsm of German anti-Semitism and his refusal to salute Hitler. He lectured incredulous Brown Shirts on Jeffersonian democracy. He was eventually removed by the U.S. State Department for being “too confrontational” with the Nazis and not sufficiently neutral. (Dodd’s primary defender at State was Fairfax’s own “Uncle Walton” Moore who also despised Hitler). Years later, after his death, his opposition to Hitler was totally vindicated. The other favorite book is “Beggars or Angels,” an autobiography written by Rosemary Tran Lauer of Oakton. Rosemary grew up in the central highlands of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. She was married with two small children when the North Vietnamese Army broke through in the spring of 1975. A mere hours before Saigon fell, she went to the Saigon Harbor to find her husband, an ARVN officer. In the crush of people, she lost track of her 2-year old son, then followed him down a gangway and onto a ship — and six weeks later she was living in a relocation camp in Pennsylvania. Rosemary’s story started with her as a refugee, but it got more interesting as she settled in the D.C. area, raising a family alone and beginning her own business. She enrolled in secretarial school, flunked out because she couldn’t keep shorthand, then found work as a hairdresser. Soon she had her own shop. And more kids in the house. Rosemary’s life had as many defeats as triumphs. Businesses failed, marriages didn’t work. But she never lost faith in herself or her opportunities in this nation. She literally worked around the clock to make ends meet. Today she’s a successful businesswoman in commercial real estate with five college grads for children. And she lives in a beautiful house in Oakton with her husband Jim. (I’ve been there). So that’s a couple good books about good people. Right here in northern Virginia.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 03:59:10 +0000
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