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By Loretta ParkPulitzer Prize winner speaks to Davis Education Foundation
LAYTON -- Monty Loesch of Fruit Heights crossed the Brooklyn Bridge numerous times many years ago when she lived in Stanton Island, N.Y.
It wasn't until she read "The Great Bridge," written by David McCullough, that she discovered the story of the bridge that took 14 years to build.
That book, along with all of McCullough's other books, was the reason she was among 1,700 others who attended his lecture Tuesday in Layton High School's auditorium.
McCullough, historian and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, spent the day in Utah thanks to Davis Education Foundation and the Davis Reads Literary Committee. Earlier, McCullough was the guest of honor at dinner held at the Davis Conference Center.
Loesch also read "1776," McCullough's latest book, which is on the best seller list.
"It's amazing to me after reading (1776) that we got to be a country," Loesch said.
McCullough said it's not only amazing, but lucky as well.
Luck plays an important role in history, McCullough said, but it also takes hard work, something many people who fail to study history don't understand. The historian has been a guest lecturer at many colleges and universities throughout the country, including Utah.
History is not being taught as it should in the schools and in homes, McCullough said. Parents and grandparents have the responsibility of teaching children about their country and should not rely on schools.
"We've been doing an inadequate job for the past 25 years," McCullough said.
History is not required to graduate from many colleges and universities, and six states no longer require history courses to graduate from high school. McCullough said in news conference earlier in the evening that adults should take children to historical sites, not wait for schools to do it. When a child feels how important a historical site is to an adult, it becomes important to the child.
In a few weeks, McCullough is taking his family to visit Theodore Roosevelt's home in Long Island.
He said the first historical site he remembers visiting was Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania, where "George Washington, young, inexperienced, brash and foolhardy" entered into the French-Indian War. McCullough was only 7 years old.
Then when he was 14 years old, McCullough went with a friend to Monticello, Va.
"It changed my life," McCullough said. "That is when I got an interest in Thomas Jefferson."
Also, those who study histor, know there "are no 'simpler times,' " McCullough said. He talked about Abigail Adams, John Adams' wife, and how she had to get up at 5 a.m., get the fire going, educate her children because the schools were closed, run the farm and cope with diseases that swept in and killed hundreds.
"There was no 'simpler times,' " McCullough said.
Abigail Adams had to decide if her children should receive inoculation for small pox. She couldn't call her husband, who was in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress, and ask him for his opinion.
Getting on the Internet to research the pros and cons of inoculation was also not an option.
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