To the editor: Mother stood out because she remained soft-spoken and polite while residing in the Bronx.
She had relocated after graduating from Druid City Hospital as a nurse in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where I was later born.
When I was a child living in the Bronx, we would watch together her favorite program on our 10-inch RCA TV screen in the 1950s. We regularly missed snatches of the story because we lived one block from the elevated train track on Jerome Avenue that roared by. "I Remember Mama" reminded her of her childhood on the farm in Alabama.
Afterward, she talked a lot about how her family so valued honesty and hard work. Her Scottish ancestor had arrived on these shores in 1709 after the famine there in 1699.
Just under 200 years later, my father's family arrived from Galicia to escape the pogroms. Like every other non-Native American, my ancestors traveled here because conditions were so dire in their homeland.
I have often tried to pinpoint exactly when "free speech" began to include outright lies and defamation of innocent people that has become so acceptable to so many Americans.
Did Madison Avenue's advertising campaigns in the 1970s begin to erode and corrupt American ideals?
As children in the 1950s, we revered "Superman" because he stood for truth, justice and humility as the "American way." And even as recently as Nixon's time in office, America was shocked by his lying and cheating.
If we are to preserve our nation's experiment with democracy, we must begin teaching children to practice speaking their truth in preschool and to listen patiently to others' points of view, because we cannot have authoritarian homes and schools through high school and then miraculously expect 18-year-olds to suddenly know how to function as responsible clear-thinking and -acting adults.
Americans must reclaim truth, civility and honest effort as American values. The world still knows America is great. That's why people still risk their lives trying to get here.
Real men and real women believe in truth, justice and conscientious behavior.
Clearly being in possession of large sums of money does not guarantee creation of real men or women. Truth, justice, civility and honest effort does. The ability to discern real quality in ourselves and others is essential in a democracy.
Grace Breckenridge, Williamstown