March 28, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 19 came up for air. It was another two-day read, punctuated by blacking out several hours after bedtime. Lord went over the top to produce a masterpiece with “A Night to Remember,” and he produced one. His narrative is prefaced with a short account of a novel called “Futility” by Morgan Robertson. The ship in Robertson’s “Futility” is 70,000 tons displacement; the Titanic was 66,000 tons. Robertson’s ship is 800 feet long; the Titanic was 883.5 feet long. Both ships had triple screw propellers and could make 24 to 25 knots – about 30 miles per hour. Both could carry 3,000 passengers and both had an inadequate number of lifeboats because they were both dubbed “unsinkable.” Both ships hit icebergs and sank with great loss of life, including many rich and famous passengers. Robertson’s ship was called “The Titan.” His book was published in 1898, 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic. Dr. Ian Stevenson, the greatest contemporary expert on evidence for the paranormal, got Robertson’s book republished, with notes about another anomaly about the Titanic: the number of ticket cancellations before the fatal maiden voyage of the Titanic was double the usual statistic, as also happened before the U-boat sinking of the Lusitania three years later. Lord only gave this foreshadowing two pages in “A Night to Remember,” but it was a great opening. The rest of the book is composed from 63 interviews with survivors along with vintage newspaper accounts, so the whole glamorous and tragic episode comes alive once again. Lord chronicled the heroes and the scoundrels. The British captain went down with his ship. The English and Irish and Scottish band played on. Mrs. Isidore Strauss, a leader of New York’s Jewish community and a first class passenger who could have claimed a seat in a lifeboat, chose to stay with her husband. They died together. When Mr. Strauss’ will was read, his heirs found he had urged his wife to be a little more selfish for her own good. Lord was great on touching details like that. He also noted that some newspapers of the time opined that only the Nordic third class passengers were worth saving and the other immigrants were no great loss. Lord did not share that opinion. He was opposed to racism all his life. He pointed out that Bruce Ismay, the designer of the ship, snuck onto a lifeboat where he did not have priority, and had to be opiated due to his panic. Ismay lived until 1937 as a recluse because of his faulty design and his cowardice. Mr. and Mrs. Strauss and the Celts in the ship’s band had a lot more class. In his last book, “The Night Lives On,” Lord, whose own upper-class Baltimore credentials and Princeton and Yale background were impeccable, pointed out that 53 percent of all first class and second class passengers were saved, but only 25 percent of third class passengers survived. Only one child in first class was lost, and 94 percent of first class and second class women and children were saved, against 42 percent of the third class women and children. Even at the time, this raised some irate eyebrows. “I wonder if this guy is still alive,” Johnny said after his reading marathon. He searched through “Who’s Who in America,” found Lord’s New York City address, and wrote him a fan letter. They became regular pen pals, with Johnny sending tales of his adventures with Revolutionary War and Civil War reenacting and environmental projects, and Lord sending old photographs of himself in the army in London, at the helm of an ocean liner, and roaming the jungles of Guadalcanal with Melanesians who showed Lord where the Australian Coast Watchers from “Lonely Vigil” had kept their one and only refrigerator for the beer ration. Perhaps inspired by Lord’s chivalry, Johnny performed an act of knighthood. He wrote: “Dear Walter: My sister is really smart and is number three in her class, but she had test phobia and her SATs don’t reflect her intelligence. Can you do something for her at Princeton?” Shortly after Emily had been offered a full scholarship to Rutgers, a fine university, she received a cryptic note from a former O.S.S. code clerk. It read: “Dear Emily: The deed is done. Walter Lord.” The next mail brought her acceptance to Princeton. I think that if Lord were convicted of who-knows-what I would not believe it. Toward the end of Lord’s life, Emily and Johnny visited him at his New York apartment. Lord was chair-bound and in the later stages of his brave battle with Parkinson’s disease, but the kids told me that meeting him was like talking to a 30-year-old man in a 90-year-old body. They got a huge kick out of the double-glass table with souvenirs that survivors of the Titanic had carried away on the lifeboats, and had then dropped off with Lord as they prepared for their final voyage. The collection was not morbid: It was a vivid trip back in time, like Lord’s books. When he died, I suspect that he was more than ready. The family response had little to do with grief, and much to do with relief for his sufferings and profound respect for his achievements. Anybody who thinks that history has to be tedious should read something by Lord. Anybody who thinks he or she is a historian should try to write like Lord. With great personal and family gratitude, I mentioned him in the dedication of my own forthcoming book about what made Pearl Harbor happen: Operation Snow. The information I used was not available when Lord wrote “Day of Infamy” and still is not available except through Japanese, Korean, and Russian translations. Had the information been available, Lord could have done it better. “Day of Infamy” did not have the sources I did, but it remains the gold standard for being there. The 100th Anniversary of the sinking to the RMS Titanic is coming up. As I was going over the history of the sinking, I learned that today is the 10th Anniversary of the death of Walter Lord, the man who brought the Titanic back from the depths of oblivion into popular consciousness. Lord was the author of 11 best-sellers distinguished by thorough decency, profound depth of research, and the sort of writing that brings the past to life with a vitality that cannot be ignored. I found this out more than 20 years ago when my son, who was a precocious slacker in terms of his home schooling, was first introduced to Lord’s books through “Day of Infamy,” the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lord did not deal with conspiracy theories, except to allude to the fact that most informed Americans were expecting a war with Japan in the near future. He dealt only with the sights, sounds, and emotions of Dec. 7, 1941 in a way that made the reader feel he or she was there. Lord, a graduate of Princeton, had dropped out of Yale Law School to enlist right after Pearl Harbor. While his eyesight kept him out of combat, perhaps contrary to his own wishes, he worked for the Office of Strategic Services (the future CIA) in Washington, London, and Paris. He knew enough about the realities of the war not to churn out meretricious hokum about how the Soldier of Freedom led the Greatest Generation in the Good War. He was a proven patriot and a brave man. He was also too good a historian to be a post-war propagandist. He wrote about how brave Americans risked their lives to save their buddies from burning and sinking ships. He also wrote about how panicky anti-aircraft gunners shot down five of our own planes the night after the attack, and how other U.S. planes strafed a bunch of Japanese-American fishermen flying an American flag. To balance the picture, Lord also described how a Japanese-American teamed up with the Japanese pilot of a damaged Zero that crash-landed on a “private” island to terrorize the Hawaiians until the outraged Hawaiians killed the pilot with their bare hands and the Japanese-American shot himself in the head. Lord was not a “bad guy/good guy” writer. He was not Steven Ambrose or Iris Chang. He was a meticulous historian whose writing appealed to everyday readers, including veterans who remembered what happened. The amazing thing was that the readers of his era – the later 1950s through 1986 – respected his innate honesty and appreciated his descriptive talent to such an extent that he became a perennial best-selling author whose works checked against the facts churned up by the academic historians and still appealed to the people who were there. He was good enough to make it without hokum and lopsided flag-waving. None of Lord’s books ever flopped, but the biggest hit was “A Night to Remember.” After my son finished “Day of Infamy” in just two days, he asked me, “Did this guy write any other books?” We were at the Glen Rock Library checking out “A Night to Remember” within moments of that question. He barely A knight to remember: The historian Walter Lord Society mounts Civil War exhibit The Ridgewood Historical Society’s new exhibit on Adam Badeau and the Civil War in New Jersey is now open. Badeau was a Ridgewood resident and Civil War general with a surprising connection to John Wilkes Booth. Prior to the Civil War, Badeau was a theater critic for a Sunday newspaper in New York. In this capacity, he met many of the famous actors of the day. When war broke out, Badeau became part of General Sherman’s staff. A serious injury en route to Vicksburg disrupted his military career, and he returned to New York City to recover. While in New York, he was reportedly cared for by two New York stage actors he had befriended as a theater critic: Edwin Booth and his younger brother, John Wilkes Booth. The following year, Edwin Booth would save the life of Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son, while John Wilkes Booth would become best known for assassinating the president. Upon his recovery, Badeau became a member of General Grant’s staff and was present at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. He later worked for the State Department and was the U.S. Consul to Cuba and England. The final years of Badeau’s life included a U.S. Supreme Court case regarding payment for his service to the government. Fortunately for Badeau, he was eventually found eligible for military retirement payments. To learn more about Adam Badeau and the Civil War in New Jersey, visit the Schoolhouse Museum, at 650 East Glen Avenue. The museum is open Thursdays and Satur- day from 1 to 3 p.m. and Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, visit www.ridgewoodhistoricalsociety.org. Adam Badeau