Free Tom Brokaw by The Greatest Generation Page B

highway construction at a time when most old asphalt was simply carted off to a landfill.
    Dowling is especially proud of his snow-removal techniques. He saw a major snowstorm as the highway superintendent’s equivalent of battle. He had some experience with clearing airfields during winter storms in the war, so he simply adapted what he had learned: he put more trucks on the road, switched to the new, modern snow tires, introduced new hydraulic systems. Smithtown became so well known for its snow-removal efficiency that the state of New York contracted Dowling to teach other municipalities and counties what he had learned. As he said when I spoke with him, “I ran that department like a business and in military style.”
    That was not enough for him, however. “I didn’t take life for granted,” he says. “The most memorable lesson I learned in the war is that life is precious. I really came to appreciate that when we languished in that prison camp. So I am always looking for things to do.”
    In addition to his duties as highway superintendent and in the seafood trucking business, Dowling also ran a bulldozer business and a small restaurant, for a time. “I was always looking for challenges in life. I think the war years gave me that. And anyone who went through the Depression understood what a dollar was and what it meant to find work. I think I passed these values on to my kids and the people who worked for me. One of the young people who worked for me came by later and said, ‘You had a purpose. We came to work every day knowing you had a project for us. You were always looking ahead. You treated us with respect.’ ”
    Dowling didn’t discuss the war much until he was in his late fifties, and then he went to a reunion of the 8th Air Force. He came home from that with renewed pride in what he had been through, and began to share his stories with his family. “Now,” he says with a chuckle, “my sons and grandsons ask me more about the war. They’ll see something on the History Channel and say, ‘My grandfather flew through that!’and they’re in awe.”
    That’s a change from the earlier years, when he first returned from the war. “After we got back, people didn’t talk about it and you didn’t ask, even if they were in the same age group and likely served in the war. I didn’t know until a few years ago that one of my Little League coaches had been in an air raid that I knew of; it was just like that.
    â€œIt didn’t really become important to talk about until we were in our sixties. When I went back to the site of our prison camp, I started opening up with my wife and family a little more. I felt I could, because other guys were there. But my pilot would never talk to his wife about it. And two members of our crew, when we tried to get them to reunions, they just didn’t want to relive it, I guess.”
    Three of his sons went to Vietnam and James is proud of that. He’s also confident the country and this generation are in good shape. He and Dorothy, his wife since 1945, went into Manhattan a few years ago to march in a veterans’ parade, and they were stunned by the number of people “who just came up to us and shook our hands, saying, ‘Thanks.’ I think the spirit of America is back.”
    As for his future, James has a few more Model A’s to restore and then, as he says, “I will look for some civic project to get involved with, some service to perform.”
    Dorothy offers the most fitting testimonial. Fifty-three years after she married the young man with the blazing red hair, she laughs when asked the secret to their long love affair. “Simple,” she says. “He’s a really great guy.”

    Harry R. Hammond, identification card

REV. HARRY REGINALD “REG” HAMMOND
    â€œI think we were on God’s side. The United States has done
some foolish