THE 64-YEAR-OLD QUESTION

Most have heard of the $64 Question and later the $64,000 Question. But how many have heard of the 64-year-old Question? Only if you lived 64 Augusts ago when Chicago and America were as different from today as today's Millennium Park is from the Egyptian Pyramids....!

In that hot, sticky August of 1945, Chicago and America celebrated the stunning climax of World War II. After almost six horrific years and 60 million lives, the whole bloody thing came to a sudden mushroom- cloud ending over Japan. On the night of August 15, almost a million Chicagoans crushed into the Loop to scream their hearts out. It was finally over over there.

My father, just back from service, tried to drive us into the epicenter of the jubilation -- State and Madison. A Walgreen's was still on one corner and Marshall Field's on the other. Both gone now, but even more important, so is the thundering sense of pride and unity that screamed itself hoarse until after 3AM. It was a pride and unity we've seen only rarely since.

Today's national struggles are often just as crucial as those of Pearl Harbor, Midway, Iwo Jima and Normandy. Trouble is, a half-century of sophisticated power and prestige has ironically sucked much of this innocent pride and unity out of our city and our country. History reports that if nothing succeeds like success, so also nothing recedes like success!

For those who weren't there that triumphant August night 64 years ago, maybe the handiest comparison for you might be another cheering crowd at nearby Grant Park for a new president's election last fall. There was a similar whiff of victory, pride and unity that night too. Instead of young sailors and marines exhausted from an ugly war, there were young voters exhilarated by a surprise win.

I was there for both; but if on the face of it there are striking parallels, at the heart of it, there are none. Far too much national anger and contentiousness has grown over these 64 years. Back then, we were too proud to later grow angry; too united to later grow contentious. In the August of 1945 there was apparently just enough national innocence to still believe a victory night could last longer than the dawn.

Maybe the burden of 64 years of sophisticated power and prestige has made such exuberant innocence seem too sentimental to still believe in. Something like today's player at the plate too busy with sophisticated mechanics, that belting that sentimental homer in the bottom of the ninth seems too sentimental to still count on.

Takes more than national innocence to make a nation great. But 64 years ago this August, it sure helped!