Bob Schieffer, award winning CBS news commentator and former presenter of “CBS Sunday Morning” program, proclaimed, “Washington’s End: The Final Years and Forgotten Struggle,” (Scribner, 352 pgs., $30) by Jonathan Horn, “is a wonderful and insightful read. I can’t remember a book where I paused so many times to say to myself, ‘I didn’t know that.’ This engaging book is history served up exactly the way I like it.”
I totally agree with Schieffer! Horn has filled the pages with a portion of George Washington’s life that is routinely left out, or is severely limited in most biographies. This is a very important, useful biography.
Two new essentials stand out in Horn’s significant work: Washington was not a very successful farmer — or at least the land around Mount Vernon did not thrive — and he returned to “public life” briefly as “commander in chief of the armies of the U.S.”
Carefully woven throughout is the bitter partisan battles between Washington’s Federalists and the Republicans, chiefly led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Caught in the middle of those politics were second U.S. President John Adams of Massachusetts and Washington who found more political criticism in retirement than he had in his eight-year presidency.
Also cited were Washington’s poor dealings, and public feuds with his successors, Adams and Jefferson, while he strongly supported his friend Alexander Hamilton.
Historian Horn, a former White House speechwriter under President George W. Bush, realized in putting his immense research together that Washington, the nation’s first past president really didn’t know how to react or what was expected of a former chief executive. He found it difficult to “just fade away,” even though in a letter to Henry Knox on March 2, 1787, two days before he left office, Washington said, “The remainder of my life (which in the course of nature cannot be long) will be occupied in rural amusements … at Mount Vernon.”
In the wake of the quasi-war with France and the fear that French troops would be sent to invade the U.S., it was felt that a standing Army should be created. Horn explains that Washington agreed to be Army commander in chief of that Army in mid-1798, only on the condition that he “be allowed to stay at Mount Vernon unless absolute necessity demanded he take the field.”
A similar response came from Washington earlier in 1788 when he agreed to become the first American chancellor of the College of William & Mary, the last public office he held.
Washington was elected chancellor on January 18, 1788, by the W&M Board of Visitors. However, he finally accepted the post in an April 30, 1788, letter to College Rector Samuel Griffin of Williamsburg with the understanding that he would not be required to attend campus nor participate in board of visitor’s meetings, planned for “once or perhaps twice a year.” Washington served as chancellor through his two terms as president and until his death in December 1799.
It Is surprising that Horn’s research did not disclose the W&M chancellorship post, which was definitely part of “Washington’s End.”
Saga of Aunt Ruth
Former Irvington, Virginia trial lawyer Bill Kopcsak has written an intriguing book “Ruth, More or Less: The True Story of a Woman Surviving a Brutal War and Blossoming into a Figure of Glamour and Strength,” (Kopcsak, 160 pgs., $14,95) about his aunt.
Thank goodness, Kopcsak has told her story through times he visited with her and times she was willing to talk with him, although she refused to allow tape recordings of their conversations.
Kopcsak believes Ruth is “perhaps the only woman ever to be married to a World War II, high-ranking German Panzer Commander and later to a decorated U.S. Army Tank Commander (Kopcsak’s “Uncle Pete”), who served under General (George) Patton.” She survived the terrible bombing and resulting firestorm that destroyed her hometown of Dresden, Germany, and the deaths of her first husband during the war and her 6-year-old son, John Walter, in an automobile accident.
Her life also involved being an athlete in the 1935 Olympic trials in javelin, shot put and discus competition. After her marriage to Pete Kopcsak the couple remained mostly in Germany. In those years, Aunt Ruth was a glamorous woman with “movie-star” looks, he said.
An adventuresome Teacher
Kirk Peter Lovenbury’s autobiography “From Mormon to Mystic: Excerpts from My Life,” (Lovenbury, 168 pgs., $12.30) is an interesting book and an insightful account of his amazing life as a “teacher” and an active, aggressive learner.
The account is a series of essays about the places where he lived — Japan, Germany, France, Kenya, China, Italy, Ireland, South Africa and England, twice — and the people he met and his responses to those various societies. Through the years, he also visited 90 more nations around the world.
Woven through his life has been a religious twisting and turning that, Lovenbury says, has strengthened him in various ways. Born into the Episcopal Church, Lovenbury ultimately was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon Church, because he felt “God wanted me to join.”
Lovenbury, a Williamsburg retiree, also explained he is gay, but did not “come clean” until age 74 in 2016 when he acknowledged he had “lived a lie all my life.” Put all these factors together and Lovenbury has had a fascinating 78 years, which he describes in a marvelous, appealing way.