Resilience and redemption

On June 25, 1925, in the bustling New York borough of Brooklyn, the day must have seemed ideal for growing a garden, at least to his parents, Irving and Eda. History records a high of 76 F, a low of 62 F and accumulated rainfall of just over an inch.

And indeed it was, proverbially speaking. The two shopkeepers, immigrants from Russia (him) and Paris, France (her), brought a son into the American world that day, Robert L. Hilliard, born and soon to be raised in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Their son was — and he remains — a member of that singular crop of Americans characterized by a newsman many decades later as "the Greatest Generation."

That was more than 99 years ago, with World War I only seven years behind them, Calvin Coolidge in the White House as the 30th president and the Pittsburgh Pirates on the winning road to a World Series victory over the Washington Senators in seven games that fall.

Hilliard has marched right through the thunderous, sometimes difficult American parade of nearly a solid century that followed that long-ago summer, a participatory veteran of all of it: the Great Depression, the Great Society, the rise of fascism that threatened to destroy the democratic fabric and hope of the planet, World War II and its conclusion with atomic weapons, the emergence of the United States as the preeminent superpower on the globe with a host of its own problems at home, the advent of the baby boomer generation, the McCarthy era, desegregation, presidential assassination, the Vietnam war, civil rights and the rights of women, and later the turn of the millennium. As all of the World War I and most of the World War II veterans faded away, all that was followed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing 20 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, it was both startling and gratifying recently to see Hilliard, still seemingly as clear as a ringing bell, sitting in the Laboratory Theater in Fort Myers talking with actors, directors and a music arranger about staging of his newest (and oldest) play, a world premiere of the musical "Piccadilly."

Now the author of almost 40 books of nonfiction and fiction along with other dramas, he wrote the play and composed the songs in the late 1940s, put it in a drawer for decades when his life moved on, and will now see it produced in late December this year, in the days between Christmas and the New Year.

Based on his own experiences, the story describes what happens to two G.I's on leave in London at the end of World War II.

Hilliard is very likely the last American veteran of World War II who will be present at the world premiere of his own work — a man still writing and producing books, somehow.

Unlike some veterans, it seems, his life has been defined not just by what happened to him in war but by what happened to him in the long American battle afterword — the lifelong battle to do some good in the world.

By his own admission and the conclusions of people who know him, his living purpose has been to resist cruelty, intolerance or animosity toward groups defined by race, religion or behavioral persuasion.

He puts the raison d'etre for that model of living like this: "If everyone tried to do something every day, according to their individual skills and abilities, no matter what they are, to make the world a little better place for people less fortunate than themselves, even in the smallest of increments, we will have justified our existence on this earth."

That attitude started in his boyhood in New York, a Jewish kid (through his mother) in a tough neighborhood of mostly Italian and Irish families where some other kids might be inclined to pick on him or his friends. He could fight, and he protected smaller, more vulnerable boys, he recalled.

And then, in his teenage years, a war started for Americans, seemingly far away. But by the time he hit 18, it wasn't.

He enlisted as a private in the United States Army, one of 16 million Americans who served in World War II and now one of about 66,000 who remain alive. As a radio operator and forward observer, in late December of 1944, then 19 years old, he found himself deep in winter Belgium facing the last well-planned, aggressive action by the Germans in World War II at the so-called Battle of the Bulge.

For Americans, it was the bloodiest battle of the war. In just over five weeks, about 19,000 were killed and more than 55,000 wounded in combat, one of them Hilliard, who received the Purple Heart.

How that looks to him now is sobering.

"We entered World War II to fight for freedom and equality. Or so we were told," he wrote to introduce a poem, "Black Blood," in which he put into words a combat experience he remains loathe to talk about. The poem is included in his 2018 collection, "Poems of Love and War."

"There are no good wars, but I believed then, and still do, that World War II was a necessary war, one to stop fascism and genocide from dominating even more of the world. But I did not see the same freedom being applied to all of us who thought we were fighting for it. I put my thoughts in ("Black Blood") while in combat in Europe in 1944."

Among the lines: "Scared! / Raise your rifle. They were only men / of flesh... and blood/ and would die. But / they had rifles, too, / that spurted flame / and noise / and... / Pain. / Searing... Throbbing... Pain. / And blood. / And home..."

Remarkably, what happened to Hilliard in the days, weeks and months following the German surrender on May 7, 1945, while serving as part of the Second Air Disarmament Wing that helped identify and collect Luftwaffe materials near the St. Ottilien monastery in Germany would shape the rest of his life as much as combat.

Hilliard and a fellow soldier, PFC Edward Herman of Philadelphia, helped save the lives of hundreds of "displaced persons" neglected and mistreated by American forces at St. Ottilien, a monastery turned hospital for German troops and later for concentration camp survivors, located about 30 miles southwest of Dachau.

As whistleblowers, their actions helped improve the conditions of thousands of other displaced persons in Europe, many of whom were rounded up as they wandered the roads and put behind barbed wire without sufficient clothing, medicine or even food by Americans.

That history is documented in John Michalyzyck's 1997 film, narrated by Studs Terkel: "Displaced: Miracle at St. Ottilien." The film is based on the 1997 memoir Hilliard wrote, "Surviving the Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation."

The "miracle" stemmed directly from the actions of Hilliard and Herman, then 24, a Philadelphian who died in 2007 in West Palm Beach.

They disobeyed orders. They stole Army food. In what may be the first and last deal of its kind, Herman, a self-described "wheeler-dealer" who later became an international financier, bought out a PX (a post exchange store with comfort goods for G.I.s). He raised the money by selling cigarettes, lingerie and perfume on both sides of the German-French border.

Then they snuck their life-saving largesse to the desperately ill displaced persons at St. Ottilien, with the help of an extraordinary doctor and camp survivor now mostly lost to history, Zalmen Grinberg — past the military police and eventually past the barbed-wire perimeters that characterized many displaced person camps in the months following VE day.

But most importantly, Hilliard and Herman blew the whistle that helped alert President Harry Truman and Earl Harrison. Then dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Harrison accepted Truman's request to investigate the claims of serious abuse of the Jews by Americans.

To mouth off, the two soldiers printed about 1,000 copies of a letter on the base newspaper press where Hilliard had been made editor of the 2nd Wing Eagle. Those letters helped change everything.

With the help of other G.I.s who agreed to post copies under their own names, Herman and Hilliard managed to slip the letter past Army censors. They mailed it to individuals, churches, synagogues and community centers across the country. In Hilliard's "purple prose," as he characterizes his writing of the time, they accused the Americans of "genocide by neglect" — a reality based on their own observations and later confirmed by historians. They asked for immediate shipments of anything people could gather: food, clothing and medicine, in particular.

Somehow, the letter reached President Truman's desk.

And it worked, at least for some — for those who had not died while subsisting on the 600- to 700-calorie-per-day diets the Americans provided survivors, at first.

When the president dispatched Harrison in the summer of 1945, the investigator first visited Hilliard's mother before traveling overseas. At her invitation and sitting in her living room, he read her son's private letters home, which Mrs. Hilliard had kept, detailing what the private had seen. Then Harrison journeyed to Europe, visiting many camps with Army Capt. Abram Klausner, a chaplain and rabbi who ministered to the people at St. Ottilien.

In August, Harrison delivered a deeply unflattering portrait of American behavior toward displaced persons to the president.

On Sept. 30, 1945, The New York Times carried this headline on page 1: "President Orders Eisenhower To End New Abuse Of Jews. He acts on Harrison's report, which likens our treatment to that of Nazis."

Finally in November, the first of about 1,200 packages began to arrive at St. Ottilien, many weighing 50 pounds or more. They had been held on the docks in New York or in Army warehouses until Truman ordered Eisenhower to act, the bounty of compassionate Americans who had responded.

Hilliard earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University and went on to entertain three major careers: First in media, working as a newspaper editor, New York drama and film critic, and as a writer, director and performer in professional theatre, radio and television. Second, in his federal government service as chief of public broadcasting of the Federal Communication Division, among other jobs. And finally, as a college dean of graduate studies, dean of continuing education and now professor emeritus of media arts at Emerson.

More importantly to him, said his wife, JoAnn Reese Hilliard, are his two children and a grandson, Mark Hilliard, Mara Verhayden-Hilliard and Marlow Verheyden Messineo.

"Bob is an ever-unfolding adventure unto himself, a creator of doing-and-seeing learning experiences," she told Florida Weekly. "(But) the most important part of his life is his family: Mark, Mara and Marlowe. They are the forces that cause him the most joy, the greatest devotion and the strength to carry out his life's ambitions."

A close friend of his, Tom McCarter, also born and raised in Brooklyn but a longtime Floridian now retired to Asheville, N.C., has put it this way about the life of Robert Hilliard, a veteran of well over a third of the nation's history.

"Hilliard is my Brooklyn soul mate. We have demonstrated together on behalf of migrant farm workers (he wore a jacket given to him by Cesar Chavez), Black Lives Matter and gun control. He has written plays on individuals' right to privacy and social justice. He doesn't just talk the talk; he walks the walk. He is my Jiminy Cricket. He is the world's Jiminy Cricket." ¦