thedrifter
08-22-07, 10:00 AM
'A hard life, but an honorable one'
Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-08-22 07:00:00.0
Current rank: # 140 of 5,674
BALTIMORE -
When we talk of the Greatest Generation, we mean those such as Danny Brewster. When we talk about the ones who stepped forward in time of dreadful war, and came home to help build bridges across a vast racial divide, we mean Brewster. He paid a heavy price for this, with his political career and his drinking. But, at the end of his life, we should remember him standing tall when it was toughest.
He joined the U.S. Marines at 19, and not many people saw more horrifying World War II action, nor stood up to it better. At least, in the short run. He led assault waves on Guam and Okinawa. He took a bullet across his scalp, a bayonet in his arm and grenade shrapnel in his legs.
On Okinawa, as he conversed with a sergeant named Patty Doyle, he watched in horror as a mortar shell blew away Doyle’s head. One night on Guam, as Brewster slept in his foxhole, a Japanese soldier with a knife in his hand jumped in, slashing away. Brewster carried knife wounds the rest of his life, but he held off the attacker until a nearby Marine fired a killing shot. When he led his platoon in the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill, they had to clear the enemy out of nearby caves. Most of the Marines were killed in the fighting.
When he came home at war’s end, Brewster looked for midnight solace at the bottom of a bottle.
“The war weighed on him for the rest of his life,” his son Gerry Brewster said Tuesday.
Daniel Brewster grew up with money and privilege and a family legacy traced back to Benjamin Franklin and to British royalty. But in the new, post-war America, he understood there had to be room for all citizens and not just those with the false pedigree of skin color.
In the Kennedy-Johnson years, when Brewster went to Capitol Hill and the country first roused itself over civil rights, he was an important voice — even when he knew many Maryland voters weren’t with him. And this, too, drove him further into the bottle and distanced him from his family, and it cost him his political career.
But when he died Sunday night at 83, there were many who recalled the uplifting years, when Brewster was elected to the state legislature as a war hero and then proceeded to light up the days (and the nights) in Annapolis.
Some still recall the long-ago night he wanted a colleague to change his vote. The colleague said no. Brewster, big and strong, dangled the colleague outside a window of the Maryland Inn until the poor fellow had a change of heart.
Or they remembered the winter night at Carvel Hall, when the temperature dropped and a snooty guy at the front desk refused to make the rooms any warmer.
“Why don’t you just bust up the furniture and throw it in the fireplace?” the jerk suggested.
It was Brewster who took the suggestion literally.
When he was elected to the U.S. Senate, the country was looking for its conscience on race. Brewster had been deeply touched by his wartime experience, by the American mix coming together. He understood it was long past the time for white America to make amends.
He stood with John Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson on civil rights legislation, even when it was clear a lot of his constituents had misgivings. When the Alabama segregationist George Wallace ran in the 1964 Maryland presidential primary, Johnson asked Brewster to run as his stand-in here.
Brewster’s intentions were good, but his sobriety was not. One balmy springtime night he and Wallace both arrived in College Park. Brewster, standing on the grassy mall in front of the McKeldin Library, looked every bit the classic senator: tall, handsome, silver-haired. But his words were slow and slurred. The bottle was getting the best of him.
Instead of a cake-walk primary victory over Wallace, the vote was close. Four years later, when Brewster ran for re-election of his Senate seat and his drinking had become a public issue, he was beaten by an old friend, Charles (Mac) Mathias.
That was the end of politics for Brewster, but maybe the beginning of his personal salvation. He beat alcohol, and he faced up to a campaign payoff scandal left over from his drinking days. He rediscovered his family and spent years trying to make up for time they’d lost.
“A hard life, but an honorable one,” Gerry Brewster said.
A tough life, and a tough generation.
Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com
Ellie
Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-08-22 07:00:00.0
Current rank: # 140 of 5,674
BALTIMORE -
When we talk of the Greatest Generation, we mean those such as Danny Brewster. When we talk about the ones who stepped forward in time of dreadful war, and came home to help build bridges across a vast racial divide, we mean Brewster. He paid a heavy price for this, with his political career and his drinking. But, at the end of his life, we should remember him standing tall when it was toughest.
He joined the U.S. Marines at 19, and not many people saw more horrifying World War II action, nor stood up to it better. At least, in the short run. He led assault waves on Guam and Okinawa. He took a bullet across his scalp, a bayonet in his arm and grenade shrapnel in his legs.
On Okinawa, as he conversed with a sergeant named Patty Doyle, he watched in horror as a mortar shell blew away Doyle’s head. One night on Guam, as Brewster slept in his foxhole, a Japanese soldier with a knife in his hand jumped in, slashing away. Brewster carried knife wounds the rest of his life, but he held off the attacker until a nearby Marine fired a killing shot. When he led his platoon in the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill, they had to clear the enemy out of nearby caves. Most of the Marines were killed in the fighting.
When he came home at war’s end, Brewster looked for midnight solace at the bottom of a bottle.
“The war weighed on him for the rest of his life,” his son Gerry Brewster said Tuesday.
Daniel Brewster grew up with money and privilege and a family legacy traced back to Benjamin Franklin and to British royalty. But in the new, post-war America, he understood there had to be room for all citizens and not just those with the false pedigree of skin color.
In the Kennedy-Johnson years, when Brewster went to Capitol Hill and the country first roused itself over civil rights, he was an important voice — even when he knew many Maryland voters weren’t with him. And this, too, drove him further into the bottle and distanced him from his family, and it cost him his political career.
But when he died Sunday night at 83, there were many who recalled the uplifting years, when Brewster was elected to the state legislature as a war hero and then proceeded to light up the days (and the nights) in Annapolis.
Some still recall the long-ago night he wanted a colleague to change his vote. The colleague said no. Brewster, big and strong, dangled the colleague outside a window of the Maryland Inn until the poor fellow had a change of heart.
Or they remembered the winter night at Carvel Hall, when the temperature dropped and a snooty guy at the front desk refused to make the rooms any warmer.
“Why don’t you just bust up the furniture and throw it in the fireplace?” the jerk suggested.
It was Brewster who took the suggestion literally.
When he was elected to the U.S. Senate, the country was looking for its conscience on race. Brewster had been deeply touched by his wartime experience, by the American mix coming together. He understood it was long past the time for white America to make amends.
He stood with John Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson on civil rights legislation, even when it was clear a lot of his constituents had misgivings. When the Alabama segregationist George Wallace ran in the 1964 Maryland presidential primary, Johnson asked Brewster to run as his stand-in here.
Brewster’s intentions were good, but his sobriety was not. One balmy springtime night he and Wallace both arrived in College Park. Brewster, standing on the grassy mall in front of the McKeldin Library, looked every bit the classic senator: tall, handsome, silver-haired. But his words were slow and slurred. The bottle was getting the best of him.
Instead of a cake-walk primary victory over Wallace, the vote was close. Four years later, when Brewster ran for re-election of his Senate seat and his drinking had become a public issue, he was beaten by an old friend, Charles (Mac) Mathias.
That was the end of politics for Brewster, but maybe the beginning of his personal salvation. He beat alcohol, and he faced up to a campaign payoff scandal left over from his drinking days. He rediscovered his family and spent years trying to make up for time they’d lost.
“A hard life, but an honorable one,” Gerry Brewster said.
A tough life, and a tough generation.
Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com
Ellie