America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
Out on the Dakota prairie back in 1981, the snow was blowing across the windshield too thickly for us to be driving. Fortunately, we found the farm house we had been looking for down a dirt road partially covered in heaving white drifts. An unassuming man in jeans and a work shirt let us into the warmth and introduced us to his family. His shoulders sloped from work and the weather had left its marks on his face. Through the window of the kitchen, as the storm began to ease and show the sun, America appeared to roll endlessly westward.
Marlon Clendenning was a farmer, living a life of hard work and fulfillment with his wife and children. They were as independent as we all want to be; paid taxes, planted cash crops, obeyed the law and worshipped their god. Everything was just fine until a man from the government knocked on Marlon Clendenning's door and told him a 161 kilovolt power line was going to be built in an easement through his land right outside the kitchen window. As he curled his hands around a cup of coffee and related the conversation, he made the same point he had with the man from the government.
"There ain't nothin' comin' between me and that sunset," he said.
The government man had probably heard it before. There are always people standing in the way of "progress." But he had never met Marlon Clendenning. Clendenning was standing in the way of greed. And he knew it. After he had made the transition from farmer to activist citizen, Clendenning guided reporters and others to where they needed to look to find critical information about the Nebraska power company that wanted to build the power line from Hudson Bay in Canada down to Omaha. The electric utility argued the region was growing and the energy was going to be needed. But growth rates were usually below 2 percent. The real reason for the 161 KV monster was to take cheap power generated at Chruchhill Falls in Canada and sell it into the Mid-America power grid and make large profits.
And before he went back to his farm, Marlon Clendenning put an end to an unnecessary project. And the unobstructed sun still spreads color across his wheatfields.
He is only a slightly different person from Ernestine Glossbrenner. A solitary type, she was driving through the brush country of South Texas in early spring around the same time Marlon Clendenning was coming down off of his tractor. Glossbrenner came into the little community of Alice and saw the earth cast with bluebonnets and indian paintbrushes and she was compelled to stop. She became a teacher in Alice and discovered the school did not have the resources to provide for the descendants of Mexican immigrants or the children of oil fiield roughnecks. In the communities where there were good homes and prospering businesses like Dallas, a fine education was available. Down in Alice on the edge of America, though, there were old books, worn out buildings, and low pay for educators. It didn't make sense.
Ernestine Glossbrenner, the unlikliest of all politicians, decided to do something about what she was experiencing. She ran for the Texas legislature. And was elected. She drove her big, rattling car the 300 miles to Austin and figured out a way to live on the $7200 annual salary paid to Texas lawmakers. In return, she got to work 100 hour weeks writing and fighting for laws that would transform the state's educational system. She led a reform of Texas public schools that began the process of improving education for the state's underprivileged. Ernestine hated talking to reporters and was comfortable letting someone else take credit for her efforts, (and there was no shortage of people lining up to beat their chests.) She was a rarity: a true public servant who saw a problem, got involved to solve it, worked hard for no glory beyond the joy of doing good, and went away when her service was fulfilled.
We have these people in our country. But no one is calling to them. They do not hear leaders who inspire them nor do they believe in our processes the way they used to. And maybe it is time for them to become the leaders. We are all sick from the same disease. It eats at both of our political parties and who we believe ourselves to be as Americans. The president takes us to war without asking us to make sacrifices. Congress cuts taxes for corporate interests while trying to convince us it will get us a raise or pay for our health care at our job in the Wal-Mart stock room. It doesn't.
A nation that has no heroes, we have been told, is sad. A nation that needs them is even sadder. We don't need heroes. Our country, its people and its culture, is our hero, and we are letting its honor be darkened. America is full of Marlon Clendennings and Ernestine Glossbrenners and they need only to be asked or inspired. So let's ask them, and each other. We may be stumbling now. But we have not yet fallen.
"This is not the eleventh hour. This is the hour."
I hear the words of a friend of mine rising over a fire in the clear night air of northern New Mexico.
"We are the ones we have been waiting for."