Welcome to the American Story. Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Clermont Institute.

I call this one.

Silver Markers on a Pugh.

American New Year, 1942.

The year of our Lord 2020,

and of the independence of the United States of America, the 245th, seemed to last at least a lifetime before it threw itself

half-mast and wholly disoriented over the finish line.

Any new year following an old year that long and hard deserves more than one celebration.

Speaking of lifetimes, I thought it might help recover our sea legs to cast our thoughts back a lifetime as we step eagerly but gingerly into the year 2021.

Since the average lifetime of an American these years, 2021.

Since the average lifetime of an American these days is about 79 years, this takes us to the

American New Year of 1942. New Year's Day 1942 had been set aside by President Franklin Roosevelt as a day of prayer.

He had good reason for doing this. It was a dark time.

The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor just a few weeks before.

Then Hitler declared war on the United States.

America was suddenly at war with the United States. America was suddenly at war with the greatest

military powers in Europe and in Asia. The German submarine campaign intensified

off America's East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, and no one knew what attacks might

come on the West Coast from the Japanese. Hurried preparations were being made against

sabotage in the nation's capital.

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