On November 28,1999, the last Thanksgiving of the 20th Century, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer asked: to whom do we owe the most?
Schieffer didn't elaborate on the question. He knew we would understand he wasn’t talking about who we owed the most for material wealth or miracle medicines that keep many of us alive. He knew we'd know he meant owed the most for our freedoms?
Schieffer said there were two we owed most: Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.
As we think back on the "good war" that America fought, it is easy enough to forget that even after Hitler had built the greatest war machine the world had ever known, some, even in Great Britain, still believed a way could be found to coexist with the Nazis.
And to many in America, Europe and its problems seemed no threat to a country an ocean away.
Yet those two men saw what so many others did not: They recognized that it was not the weapons the Nazis assembled that posed the danger, but the hatred that fueled their cause.
They understood the world would be plunged into a New Dark Age if the Nazis went unchecked, and so they asked what leaders seldom ask of their people any more: they asked for sacrifice.
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(In) an age when so much of life - from the products we buy to the decisions our leaders make - is so heavily influenced by polling and public opinion surveys, when we so often confuse celebrities with heroes, let us pause to remember two men who followed their inner lights and may have saved the world.
May we forever stand in awe of their skill and greatness.
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