Textbook examples: Las Vegas Chautauqua brings history to life

Wednesday, May 16, 2001 | 8:29 a.m.

From the bloodied trenches of World War II Ernie Pyle wrote gritty stories of young American soldiers dodging sniper bullets and burying their friends in foreign soil.

His columns, published in newspapers throughout the country, would connect people at home with boys on the front line and the gruesome battles that took millions of lives.

Before the war Pyle traveled nearly 35 times across the United States as a roving reporter for Scripps Howard Newspapers, telling everyday stories of the common man.

But it was his heartfelt and graphic columns depicting the brutality of war that were read by millions. His wartime column "The Death of Captain Waskow" won a Pulitzer Prize.

On Thursday the journalist, portrayed by historian Doug Mishler of Reno, will stand before Las Vegans to talk about the war, his tales from the road and read from his last column, "And So It Is Over" (1945), which was found in notes on Pyle's body after he was killed by Japanese sniper fire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima.

It's time again for chautauqua, the outdoor living-history lesson that entertains and educates the masses.

The three-day event of scholars who research significant people from history, then portray them onstage in a lengthy monologue, followed by a question-and-answer period.

Chautauqua originated in 1874 near Lake Chautauqua in New York as a training camp for Sunday-school teachers, and later evolved into an open forum on politics, literature, religion and science.

The annual Las Vegas Chautauqua, sponsored by the Nevada Humanities Committee, has served as host to such characters as Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Robert Oppenheimer.

This year's theme, "The 'Good War': Experiences of the World War II Generation," brings together six figures from World War II.

"This is really an opportunity for us to talk about America's place in the world ... and look back at what went wrong with the 20th century," said Clay Jenkinson, veteran Chautauquan and artistic director for the Las Vegas Chautauqua.

Jenkinson will portray William Shirer, author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."

Other characters presented during the event will include Life magazine photographer Margaret Bourke-White, who took combat photos during the war and was one of the first photographers to enter the Nazi death camps at war's end; Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., son of the U.S. Army's first black general, who commanded the Tuskagee Airman; President Harry S. Truman and Yugoslavian President Marshal Tito.

"We wanted to look at issues of World War II, but from a humanities perspective," Jenkinson said.

When Jenkinson takes the stage Thursday evening he'll read Shirer's broadcasts made from Berlin. Shirer was a foreign correspondent fo the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s and '30s, and in 1937 began broadcasting the rise of Nazi Germany for CBS.

He fled Germany and later wrote "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," which explains how Hitler rose and fell from power.

"What makes Shirer important is that he's an observer ... he's a chronicler," Jenkinson said. "He started reporting at the time the Neurenberg rallies were forming. He watched tens of thousands of Germans being swept away in Hitler's hysteria.

"We take it for granted (now), but he was literally inventing broadcast journalism."

Shirer also published "Twentieth Century Journey," a three-volume set of memoirs, from 1904-1988. In 1979 Shirer published "Gandhi: A Memoir" based on interviews he conducted with Mahatma Gandhi during the early 1930s.

"It's a challenge to take a character like Shirer who had so many irons in the fire," said Jenkinson, whose past performances include Thomas Jefferson, Oppenheimer and Francis Bacon.

Jenkinson said he'll discuss Nazi Germany, Hitler's hypnotic powers, and the naivety of Americans prior to the war.

"Secondly, I want to talk at length of Gandhi because I see Gandhi as the other side of the coin," Jenkinson said.

Bourke-White, who will be portrayed Friday by Doris Dwyer, a history professor at Western Nevada Community College in Fallon, also had ties to Gandhi. After the war she traveled to India and photographed the spiritual leader. One of her most famous photographs was "Gandhi at His Spinning Wheel."

She published "Say, Is This the U.S.A.," a book about life in the United States just before it entered the war, with her husband, writer Erskine Caldwell, as well as "You Have Seen Their Faces," a book about poor tenant farmers living in the South.

Mishler said he'll extend his portrayal of Pyle to include his life prior to the war, including his friendship with Amelia Earhart, his years on the road, his alcoholism and his troubled relationship with his wife who suffered from depression and substance abuse. "I'm going to talk about his entire life," Mishler said. "I'm going to talk about the war -- bring in the 30s, his home life -- talk about his reporting.

"The portrayal is going to be the challenging part, trying to bring that emotion out of him, that roller-coaster part ... what the war does to him. I want to get that in."

Mishler said Pyle was deeply concerned with conditions on the front line.

"He really focused on these people and how miserable (they were)," Mishler said. "The troops loved him. The soldiers loved to talk to him. His job was to bring their life back home. People saw him as Uncle Ernie, their Uncle Ernie who was visiting their boys."

Pyle was so revered by the soldiers, that when the 44-year-old writer was killed, he was buried in a wooden coffin, and paid tribute to by his friends on the front, an unusual practice during the war.

He is still influential today. April 18, 1945, the day Pyle was killed, is National Columnists Day, and there is an Ernie Pyle Memorial Library in Albuquerque, N.M.

Mishler, who has portrayed several characters at past Chautauquas and presentations (giving more than 500 performances as P.T. Barnum, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford) said he is is looking forward to the message this year's Chautauqua sends.

"I hope they understand the challenge the 'Greatest Generation' faced," Mishler said.