Bush Does Something Right

As you can probably tell, I'm definitely not a huge fan of George Bush Jr., but IMHO he did something right yesterday. On 23 Dec 2008, Bush pardoned Charles Winters. Most of us, myself included, have (had) no idea who Charles Winters was, but something in the headline enticed me so I clicked it. Winters was born a Boston Irish Protestant who went on to become a produce exporter. No big deal, except that along the way he also supplied three B-17 bombers to the fledgling state of Israel, bombers which by many accounts were key to allowing Israel to win the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Winters was later convicted of violating the US Neutrality Act, and served 18 months in federal prison, after which he went on to live a quiet, anonymous life until his death in 1984. You can read more about his story elsewhere, but there are two points that fascinate me:

1. How did an ordinary man, a John Doe by any account, pull off such an accomplishment? Arguably, what he, along with two others, did turned the tide in the war for an independent Jewish state. These were ordinary people, commoners not famous or rich or powerful, yet the three of them may very well have had a pivotal role in the birth of a nation.
2. How can something this miraculous not be better known? I admit, I don't always remember all the historical facts I would like to, but I usually at least vaguely recall hearing of things such as this, even if I do not remember all the details, names or dates. For that matter, even Winters's own son did not know about his father's accomplishments until after his death.

I'm not going to begin to say that I can understand or answer either of the above. In particular, the second question is one which I have long pondered: How can history be so selective in terms of what it chooses to herald or to bury?

Everybody has heard of Francis Gary Powers, the CIA U2 pilot shot down in 1960 over Sverdlovsk, smack dab in the middle of the Soviet Union. Virtually nobody, however knows the story of McKone and Olmsted, the two survivors of the Soviet shootdown of an RB-47 in international waters just one month after the Powers incident. In both cases, the survivors were held and interrogated by the Soviets then released many months later.

Why is it that one of the stories is known by every schoolchild, yet the second one, almost identical, is an enigma? The only key difference I can see is that Powers was "caught red-handed" in the sense he was clearly over the Soviet Union, while the RB-47 was shotdown in international waters. Aside from that, the stories are almost identical. In any case, I'll use this chance to herald in my own way three unknown heroes: Charles Winters, John McKone, and Bruce Olmsted.