Missouri Presidential Primary 2012 Disappointments: From 10 cents Per Hour to $15 trillion Public Debt

I had a surprise when I came to my regular voting place on Tuesday. A sign said it would be held next door in the newer gym in the Senior Citizens building. I liked my old gym, because I was there on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, practicing basketball during the actual attack on Pearl Harbor and there I listened to the famous Day of Infamy speech of Pres. Roosevelt.

That evening my son Tom came in and was happy to report that he also voted and was pleased see an item that he had hung above the bleachers in 1978 was still there. But I heard later we were among the 88 caring people who voted out of the nearly 1,200 registered voters—about a 7 percent turnout—showing a lack of interest, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the national candidates in the current effort.
 
Some reflections on this.  I enrolled in Missouri University in September 1942.
 
By various means I was made an assistant trainer in the athletic program, working under the famed Doc Ollie DeVictor for most of the fall football season. That experience, along with my ROTC training and a full load in the Mechanical Engineering School, became a guide post for my entire life.
 
It was a depressing year, as many of my fellow students gave it all shortly after during World War II. Things were still tight as I found some extra Saturday work, picking seed corn in a sea of cuckaburrs for an noted seed scientist at MU for then 10 cents an hour. Lucky there was an apple orchard next door so we had free apples for lunch.
 
Late in the football season, I found that I had been using a spot in the training room that was set aside for assistance to MU athletes, but because I had given great service to the trainer, he didn't want to lose me as a friend and guided me into a janitor position in the Engineering Building. He did offer me the chance to help him around his house and said that as long as he was trainer, I was always welcome to come in for a towel and get a shower for getting refreshed. This I did several times.
 
I also evaluated what I could produce for the war effort at home and dropped out after that memorial semester. Thus becoming a part of the "Greatest Generation" as we are called.
 
To my knowledge, I might be the last of that group, and my cousins and friends are getting less and less each month. Since election day 2010, when I received more than 19,000 votes for the Missouri State Senate, I have been to funerals or Memorials for 30 in that category.
 
Others in charge of the country have since managed it in such a fashion to have employees in the State go from the meager 10 cents per hour to Public Debt of over $15 trillion with another $150 trillion in unfunded liabilities for which there is no way to recover.
 
For those who read this, I just had to add it to your information as you look to the future. Maybe some historian will enjoy my collection of blogs, which trace this background with living facts.
 
George D. Weber