‘KILL ’EM THERE!’ SAYS KIN OF J. HANCOCK
Founding Father’s descendant doesn’t shy from making a bold statement
A man named Del from Dwight, Ill., was pushing his wife in a wheelchair when I spotted them from across the central fountain at the Second World War Memorial. It was a couple of days before the Fourth of July, and the capital was filling with bewildered patriots who squinted at their phones to locate the White House instead of looking up to spy the president’s self-described bear cage, right across the street.
I thought Del might be an American veteran of Iwo Jima or the Normandy beachhead, but on closer inspection he turned out to be slightly too young to have served his Uncle Sam in those great battles.
He was 83, he said, and his army years had come in the 1950s, during the “police action” in Korea. It also turned out that he had spent most of his military career across the Potomac River at Fort Belvoir, Va., driving a desk.
“My unit was on the list to get shipped to Korea three times,” Del told me.
“But his colonel wouldn’t let him go because he could type,” Del’s wife, Docia, said. “Back then, not many men could!” (Docia was working as a secretary at the Pentagon when they met.)
“So,” I noted dryly, “while your buddies were on missions to search and destroy, you were on hunt and peck.”
“That’s better than gettin’ killed!” burst out Delaware
It is my custom to ask the people whom I interview to write their own names in my notebook as a protection against misspellings. So I handed over my pen, and when I looked down, I saw that he had written “Del Hancock.”
“Hancock?” I gasped. “Hancock of the actual Hancock Hancocks?”
“That’s me,” Del Hancock affirmed. “John Hancock was my great-great-great-great-grandfather.” (I hope I wrote down the correct number of “greats.” If I am wrong, as Barack Obama says of obstructionist Republicans, “So sue me.”)
It was John Hancock of Massachusetts — the bold and billionaire-ish Donald Trump of his time — who had been the first man to muster the treasonous effrontery to sign the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies (with their 2½ million far-flung citizens and their nonexistent army) from the mighty sceptre of the British Crown on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, and to sign it in a script so large and flamboyant his name has been a slang term for a signature ever since.
Del Hancock’s John Hancock wasn’t nearly as spectacular. But his outlook on his country’s security was, like his ancestor’s, sharp and cogent and defiant.
“What do you think Obama should do about Iraq and Syria?” I was asking everyone I met that day.
(Del Hancock’s) outlook on his country’s security was, like his ancestor’s, sharp and cogent and defiant.
“The stronger those terrorists get,” Del said, “the worse it’s gonna be for us. They may be here soon. We’ve got the planes and warships. We’ve got the drones. Kill ’em there. Kill ’em there. It’s better than them over here, killin’ us.”
As we chatted, a whole colony of Hancocks drifted over to where Del and I stood and Docia sat. One of these was Del’s son James.
“Can you list Barack Obama’s foreign-policy successes for me?” I asked the family, archly.
“How about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden?” James Hancock offered. “And that’s about it.”
“List his successes?” pondered Delaware “Most of ’em have been failures, haven’t they?”
This was not an uncommon response. A husband and wife named Chuck and Ann Fourtner from Buffalo also were taking in the memorial. Chuck told me that he had been of draft age during the Vietnam War, but said that “they called me twice for a physical and I didn’t show and they forgot about me.”
Behind the couple was a wall engraved with a quotation from Gen. George C. Marshall: We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.
“The problem,” Chuck was saying, “is you’ve got to have people who understand the cultures of other countries. How many civil wars have we stuck our nose into in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America?”
“Can you list Barack Obama’s foreign-policy successes for me?” I posed again.
“There haven’t been many,” Ann Fourtner said. “I can’t think of many of the last few presidents who had many successes, either.”
“What should America’s role be in the world today?” I asked.
“I wish it would be as a peacemaker,” Ann said. “But we don’t do very well at that.”