It was long years ago now, and perhaps he is dead. For sure he will have retired, if any of us clergy ever do. Yet I recall clearly the bright Autumn afternoon when I met my first real American. A fellow student had been showing some of us new folk around the college, ending his tour in the chapel. There we came across a quite unexpected sight: a man climbing, quickly and easily, down the limed-oak wall panelling. It transpired later that he never troubled with minor details like ladders when light bulbs needed changing; an ex-officer in the U.S. Marines, he just climbed up the walls and balanced in the window ledges to reach higher. Bill, he was called. William Holcombe, to be precise, and he was nothing like any of the stereotypes of Americans I have come across, before or since.
Even today, when we have no excuse (though the images are media-driven and few of us are able to resist their powerful influence) we seem to have scarcely progressed beyond the notion that most folk in the U.S.A. are probably like the Simpsons: over-sized, overweight, over-indulgent and over almost everything else. And is there still a hangover from Hitler's war and the end of Empire, a faint sense maybe that we don't really like to have to feel obliged, which clouds our vision and inclines us to an almost Gallic disdain? Which makes it easier to go along with a poplar vogue that characterises all U.S. society as wasteful, and dangerously non-ecological; whose national emblem ought not to be an Eagle but rather the Big Mac logo? Or perhaps we see ourselves too keenly mirrored in what the TV screens tell us about America.
Whatever. Something happened today which reminded me of Bill, and his balanced disregard for life, limb and ladders. I caught sight of their new President, Mr. Obama, addressing Marines about the war in Iraq, and heard the words he said at the end, 'semper fide'.
He did not say them, of course, as I might. His American English pronounces them 'semper fied', much as Agent Gibbs says them in the only US sitcom I can easily bring myself to watch on television. But the words suddenly recalled Bill. Gentle, decent, quietly spoken Bill and his disregard for heights; his sane wife and their lovely children; his patience with me and the other young folk around him; his undemonstrative, sincere and well weighed faith. I cannot say I ever really got to know him deeply well, for in careless youth I took too little advantage of his society. Among the considerable list of things I owe him was the discovery of Budweisser. But there was much more; for the discovery of that slight, dapper, tough, and normal-sized American changed forever my assumptions about his countrymen.
Too soon he was gone back to the States, and I have never known what became. But Obama today reminded me of him. It was more than just the words. He is, it dawned on me, eerily the same sort of man. He may be taller, I don't know. But he has the same kind of look about him. He appears to have the same kind of measured, quiet determination and, yes, sincerity which taught me that all Americans are not what you might expect. The worst of them are no worse than ours; their best are as good - if not better, than we have ever managed to be. Maybe I am just being wishful, after the last decade of shameful war. I had thought that it was because he is a Democrat, that Obama seemed agreeable, much as the young Kennedy did. But it is more; somehow, he reminds me of Bill Holcombe. I know how the small screen can deceive, but somewhere in him there was a glimpse of what I had sensed before but not recognised. That plain decent humanity and real belief in hope and goodness that Bill had. The burden of Office will wear him down, but I hope, for all our sakes. that he never loses it.
Over the years I find I've lived through the time of several American Presidents. I can't remember one who came to office with more hope, nor so soon became overloaded with such huge problems he did not cause. But I wish him well, and good success. And though at a distance, I thank him for reminding me of a debt to an old friend.
Semper Fide, Bill Holcombe, wherever you are. Semper Fide.
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