It Doesn't Take a Hero: The Autobiography
640
It Doesn't Take a Hero: The Autobiography
640eBook
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Overview
Note: The photo insert is not included in this edition.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307764997 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 09/22/2010 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 640 |
| Sales rank: | 454,346 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
1
When my father went off to war in August 1942, his last act was to make me the man of the house. I was with him and my mother in the backyard, which to me always seemed like a magical place, with tall evergreen shrubs and fragrant lilacs and a mysterious old stone barbecue shaped like a throne. It was dusk and the first few fireflies were out; my older sisters, Ruth Ann and Sally, were busy inside the house. I was seven years old.
Pop stood in front of me and gave a little talk about how he had to leave because he was going off to serve our country. Because he was leaving, he said, I was now going to have a big job. It was up to me to look after the girls, because men are the protectors of women. He said he had great confidence in my ability to do this, and as a demonstration of his confidence, there was something he wanted me to have. Then he went into the house while I waited with Mom. When he came back out, he was carrying his Army saber. “I’m placing this sword in your keeping until I come back,” he said, and laid it in my hands. “Now, son, I’m depending on you. The responsibility is yours.”
My father’s saber was a sacred thing in our family. We called it his West Point sword, because he’d gotten it the year he graduated, in 1917. He was always quick to tell you that West Point had shaped his entire life. “Duty, Honor, Country,” the West Point motto, was his creed, and it became mine. He kept the saber on a table in his study, and when I was a tiny boy he would sometimes pull it from its scabbard and show me where his name was engraved on the blade. (It actually said N. Norman Schwarzkopf, because the engraver had made a mistake, but that didn’t matter.) The sword had special meaning for me because it was my name, too, and because from the first day I could remember, my parents had told me I was going to West Point. My sisters didn’t like it a bit, because girls were left out. But there was never any question about what my role was going to be.
When he handed me the saber I felt an awesome obligation. To be accountable not only for it, but for Mom and the girls! I was overwhelmed. My mother I thought I could handle. It was my sisters I was more worried about, since I had no control over anything my sisters did.
Mom made sure I put the saber back in its place in the study. Then it was time for bed. My mother was a registered nurse and always insisted we get our sleep. Pop kissed me one last good-night, and I lay looking out the window. It was still twilight, and I watched the stars start to come out. I fell asleep thinking, “How am I going to do this?”
The next morning when I woke up, my father was gone. Nothing was ever the same again.
Up to then I’d had a wonderful boyhood, filled with dogs, Christmases, birthdays, tree climbing and sled riding, and all kinds of friends. Despite the Depression, we had plenty of food on the table; the most we ever saw of hard times were the tramps who would show up at the back door. Mom would have our maid give them lunch, but when they’d eaten, they had to leave immediately.
We lived in a great stone fortress known as the Green House, on Main Street in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The walls were covered with ivy, and a plaque beside the door said “1815.” The house had previously been leased by the Lawrenceville School, an exclusive boys’ school whose practice fields stretched out behind an iron fence across the street. Princeton was six miles down the road to the left; Trenton, the state capital, was six miles to the right. We had a large front yard with a copper beech tree that reached all the way to the heavens, like Jack’s beanstalk. The year Pop left I carved my initials on the trunk. Next to the beech was a big Camperdown elm—a great climbing tree whose branches drooped in such a way that you could go up and be hidden in the leaves. Beyond the barbecue pit in back, my parents owned an acre of land where they’d built a badminton court and where Mom had a flower garden with a little brick path weaving through it.
The house had a feeling of great space inside: high ceilings, a big parlor with antique furniture where we were forbidden to play, Pop’s study with its bay window and deep leather chairs, and a large living room centered around the family radio, one of those big curved-top radios with a lighted-up dial. We’d sit by it and listen to The Shadow and The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet and our own dad. Millions of Americans knew Pop’s name because he’d been head of the New Jersey State Police at the time of the Lindbergh kidnapping. After he left the police, he became the voice of Gang Busters, a crime series that was one of America’s most popular radio shows. It came on at eight o’clock on Saturday evenings, the only night of the week we were allowed to stay up late.
The Gang Busters lead-in was a simulated prison break. First you would hear the sound of prisoners marching. Then, all of a sudden, sirens would start to wail and you’d hear running footsteps and whistles blowing. Next, machine guns would open up. Finally an announcer would say, “Philips H. Lord presents Gang Busters!”
Philips H. Lord was the producer; Pop was the interviewer. An announcer would describe that week’s crime and say: “We will now hear from the principal law enforcement officer who was involved in this heinous crime. He will be interviewed by Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, former superintendent of the New Jersey State Police.”
Then Pop would come on. He had a nice, measured, reasonable-sounding voice, not too deep. He’d say: “Well, Sheriff Smith, we’re here tonight to talk about the Joe Ludwig murder case. I know that you were the principal law officer involved in this in Morristown, New Jersey. Can you tell us what happened on the night of the twenty-sixth of October, 1933?”
“Why, yes, Colonel Schwarzkopf. As a matter of fact, I will never forget that night. I was sitting in my office and snow was falling outside, and all of a sudden the phone rang …”
You’d hear a phone ring, and then the actors would read their parts. When it was time for a commercial the actors’ voices would fade and Pop would come on and say, “That’s very interesting, Sheriff Smith. We need to talk about that in more detail.” Then the announcer would say, “But first a message from Palmolive Brushless Shaving Cream.”
After the commercial, Pop would say, “Now, tell me more about what happened to that stolen automobile as it was careening down the road …”
It was absolutely fantastic.
The stories enacted in these Gang Busters scripts were all true crimes: Murder Inc., Louis Lepke. My mother objected for a while to letting me listen because the show was so violent, and one night her concerns were borne out. The program was about the Blonde Tigress, a gang leader who had escaped from prison after murdering a guard by sticking a knitting needle through his eardrum right into his brain. For months afterward, every time I thought about that I wanted to cover my ears so no one could stab me.
The show always ended with a bulletin about a criminal at large. That was the climax for me. They’d describe some horrible felony and say, “Be on the lookout for a man five feet seven, a hundred and forty pounds, black hair, brown eyes,” and I’d be hanging on every word, even though I had no more idea than the man in the moon what “five feet seven” meant. But I’d try to conjure up a face. The criminals I imagined all had black mustaches and looked a lot like Adolf Hitler.
At the back of our house, down a long hall and through the dining room, was the Schwarzkopf family’s favorite place: the kitchen. It was big and warm and always smelled good. My mother had a pantry with all sorts of delicious things on the shelves. She did a lot of canning in those days. There was a breakfast nook, a big stove, and a wooden table covered with sheet metal in the middle of the room. When my dad brought home pheasants he’d shot or fish he’d caught, they would be cleaned on that table, and Mom would roll out her pie crusts there, too.
Most days I rode my bike to school, down Main Street, left, up a ways, right, down that road, left, and up a hill. After class I’d link up with my friends Johnny Chivers, Billy Kraus, and Jimmy Wright. We’d spend nickels at the Jigger Shop, which was the town’s most popular soda fountain, play cops and robbers, and smash empty Coca-Cola bottles on sewer grates. Near Johnny Chivers’s house the trolley that ran from one end of Lawrenceville to the other crossed a little brook on a trestle about four feet high. One afternoon, after we got tired of defying death by walking on the rails, we snuck into Billy Kraus’s father’s farm and pulled up some carrots and potatoes. Then we found an old tin can, filled it with brook water under the trestle, built a fire, and set the vegetables to cook. We felt very daring because this was just what hoboes did. Though the potatoes were so underdone that biting one was like eating an apple, I’ve never had a better meal.
What People are Saying About This
"Remarkably emotional... a gripping book."—The New York Times Book Review.
"A fine and lucid book, teeming with vitality... Schwarzkopf is a compelling storyteller.—Los Angeles Times.
"A must-read... a riveting reminder that one man can influence major events."—Detroit Free Press.
"An excellent book by an excellent man."—The Wall Street Journal
