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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient James A. Michener
February 3, 1907 - October 16, 1997
JAMES ALBERT MICHENER
Awarded by
President Gerald R. Ford
January 10, 1977
Author, teacher and popular historian, James Michener has entranced a generation with his compelling essays and novels. From "Tales of the South Pacific," to "Centennial," the prolific writings of this master storyteller have expanded the knowledge and enriched the lives of million[s].
Centennial is an epic novel of the history, land, and people of Colorado. Centered around the fictional town of Centennial, the story contains an extensive cast of characters including Native Americans, French fur trappers, English noblemen, and American cowboys. Providing lively narrative against Michener's skillfully researched canvas are people like Levi and Ellie Zendt, who left the confining life of the Pennsylvania Dutch only to find terror and uncertainty on the trip west, and the Garrett family, whose yearly struggle to farm the land was met time and again with defeat.
This first of the big Michener novels, set in World War II Polynesia, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. It's dated, certainly, but still a lot of fun. It was the basis for the Rogers & Hammerstein musical "South Pacific."
J ames A. Michener is one of the great historians of the 20th century. Not only is his research vast and impeccable, but Michener is able to translate his research into a wonderfully readable book. The Bridge at Andau is no exception.
In the mid-1950's Michener was living in Austria, along the border with Hungary. From this unique vantage point, he was able to observe the large exodus of Hungarians fleeing their communist nation. His observations and discussions with these refugees brought many aspects of the communist regime to light.
He was able to bring the reader into a communist state and to reveal its inner workings, including how the government controlled the masses. At the time, this was no easy task, as the Iron Curtain was nearly impenetrable to Westerners. Nevertheless, Michener was able to piece together countless interviews with these refugees and create an accurate picture of life under the red flag.
He discussed nearly every facet of the politics of the Hungarian people. He told of intellectuals beginning their theoretical revolution, and he told of the students who were the first to pick up arms against the police forces and Soviet army. Michener also spoke of the workers, the bones of communism, and how they turned their back on the system and tried to destroy it.
Unfortunately, the revolution failed and the Hungarians were forced to flee or face dire repercussions. And Michener was there to chronicle their tales.
The Bridge at Andau is a fascinating book and a document of Cold War history. It is definitely worth reading.
When I first read about teenage children disabling tanks and killing the occupants with rocks, clubs and bottles filled with gasoline, I thought the Marines could learn a lot from these children. Their communication, teamwork and overwhelming dedication amazed me.
I read about a 12-year-old boy who strapped a half-dozen grenades to his body, pulled a wire to pull all the pins and stepped in front of the tracks of a tank. After the tank ran him over and killed him, the grenades went off, derailing the tracks and disabling the tank, so that other children could throw gasoline bottles inside the turret to kill the drivers. I realized then this was not military mastery, but desperation spawned from people who had nothing left to live for.
"It should not have happened," said the minister who told the story of the 12-year-old boy. "Somebody should have stopped such a child. But he knew what he was fighting against."
"The Bridge at Andau," by James Albert Michener, is based on interviews with survivors of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against communist Soviet occupation. Written in 1957, the book was checked out of the Depot library five times during the late 50s and early 60s. From then on, it has silently gathered dust on the shelf. Within three years after the uprising, interest in the estimated 40,000 to 80,000 Hungarians slaughtered by the Soviets had vanished.
The "Bridge at Andau", in simple language and vivid imagery, describes the actions of brave and desperate people fighting to escape the domination of the "Red Bear." In the five days following the expulsion of the initial Soviet troops, Hungarians prayed for American intervention which did not come. In the third and final phase of the fight for independence, the Soviets returned to Hungary in a fury of modern tanks and a mechanized army with hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had orders to shoot everyone and everything.
"When the victorious Soviets finally entered the castle itself, the final bastion, only thirty young Hungarians remained to walk out proudly under the white flag of surrender," according to the book. "For three days they (teenage children) had withstood the terrible concentration of Soviet power, and they had conducted themselves as veritable heroes. The gallant Soviet commander waited until they were well clear of the walls; then with one burst of machine-gun fire, he executed the lot."
This book not only tells the horrors of Soviet-occupied Hungary, but provides insight to all countries that struggled under Soviet reign. On its pages are the horrors of torturous militia which "encouraged" confessions from the most devout would-be communists. These crimes against humanity, similar in many instances to those suffered at the hands of Nazi's but less publicized. Due to lack of media interest, this uprising, although bloody and foul, never caught the concern of the world. The people in this tiny country never gained a champion for their cause. And, so lived in terror until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1990.
James A. Michener Reading List: (All titles are full-length novels unless otherwise identified)
1947 - Tales of the South Pacific (collection of short stories)
1949 - The Fires of Spring
- South Pacific (musical)
1951 - Return to Paradise
- The Voice of Asia
1953
1954 - Sayonara
- The Floating World
1957 - The Bridge at Andau
- Rascals in Paradise (nonfiction)
1959
1961 - Report of the County Chairman
1962 - Modern Japanese Prints: An Appreciation (nonfiction)
1963
1965
1968
1969 - Presidential Lottery, the Reckless Gamble in our Electoral System
1970 - Facing East: The Quality of Life
1971
1973 - A Michener Miscellany, 1950-1970
1974
1976 - Sports in America (collection of essays)
1978
1979
1980 - The Covenant
- The Quality of Life
1982
1983 - Collector, Forgers -- and a Writer
- Poland
1985
1987
1988
1989 - Caribbean
- Six Days in Havana
1990 - The Eagle and the Raven
- Pilgrimage
1991 - James A. Michener on the Social Studies
- Hokusai Sketchbooks: Selections from the Manga
- The Novel
1992 - The World is My Home (memoirs)
- Mexico
- My Lost Mexico
- South Pacific
1993 - Creatures of the Kingdom (short story collection)
- Literary Reflections : Michener on Michener, Hemingway, Capote, & Others (collection of essays)
1994
1995 - Hawaii
- Miracle in Seville
- Ventures in Editing
1997 - The Source
- A Century of Sonnets (collection of poems)
Novelist James A. Michener dies October 17, 1997
In this story:
AUSTIN, Texas (CNN) -- Internationally acclaimed novelist James A. Michener died Thursday in Texas, just days after removing himself from life-sustaining kidney dialysis, his assistant said. He was 90.
Longtime friend and assistant John Kings said the author died of renal failure. Michener last week ordered doctors to disconnect him from dialysis.
"His loss will be great not only the literary scene but to the many colleges he has nurtured through the years and the many thousands of people who feel he is their friend," Kings said.
William Livingston, a friend who was with Michener in his last days, said Michener's body would be cremated after a funeral in an Austin church Tuesday. Consumate traveler
Born in New York City in 1907, Michener had more than 40 titles to his name. His latest book, "A Century of Sonnets," was released earlier this year. But the writer will be best remembered for his novels, which read like diaries chronicling his wanderlust.
Most have simple, one-word titles like "Mexico," "Chesapeake," and "Alaska." But between the covers, the pages take the reader on an obsessively detailed journey across time and continents, often retracing the author's own steps to the far corners of the planet.
Michener was the consummate traveler.
In his memoirs, "The World is My Home," he wrote that he was determined to explore the world once he saw the road outside his childhood home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
To the east, it led to a dead-end. But to the west, Michener said the road seemed to continue forever, to strange lands and adventures he could not yet imagine.
Before he was old enough to drive, he had already hitchhiked his way up and down the entire eastern seaboard, a trip that fueled his desire to travel even farther.
"I lived in a kind of dream world that's vanished," Michener once said. "But it was the making of me." Abandoned at birth
Abandoned by his parents shortly after birth, he never knew his roots. It was a mystery that played a key role in Michener's life.
"I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people," he said. "Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people."
He was taken in by a kind widow named Mabel Michener, who made a living caring for orphaned children.
Her second occupation, doing laundry, didn't bring in much money. Food for the family often was in scant supply.
But where there was a shortage of wealth, there was a surplus of affection.
"I grew up in a bundle of love, always seven or eight kids around," Michener recalled. "Great yakkity-yakking and laughter all the time. I grew up maybe the best way a kid could if he wanted to be a writer, just surrounded by excitement." First novel becomes musical
It wasn't until he was in his 30s that James Michener found his calling as a writer.
By then, he was half-way around the world from Pennsylvania, watching the fierce battle for the Pacific in World War II.
His service in the U.S. Navy sent him on numerous information-gathering missions, introducing him to 49 islands throughout the South Pacific.
His visits to Melanesia, Micronesia and French Polynesia, to name just a few, would later provide the backdrop for some of Michener's most memorable stories.
"These islands were primitive," he remembered. "They are at the beginning of history, and that's what made them exciting. This was the real frontier of human living."
It was perhaps the people Michener met who influenced him most. On the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, he lived next to a Tonkinese woman nicknamed Bloody Mary. She would become an unforgettable character in his first book, a collection of short stories called "Tales of the South Pacific."
His debut won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for literature and was later adapted to "South Pacific," a long-running Broadway musical and later a motion picture.
Although he went on to write dozens of novels about Europe, Africa and the Americas, Michener's heart never strayed far from his literary birthplace in the Pacific Ocean. "The last time I was there, I wanted to visit a spot where I had camped (but) we could not find it," he said.
"The roads had been overgrown. A place I knew well absolutely vanished. It's sort of symbolic of the way the rest of the history of that part of the world has been overgrown by time. It vanished." Donations to schools in Texas, Colorado
Michener spent his later years in Austin, Texas, where he began living while working on his 1985 novel "Texas."
The Austin-based University of Texas is among his biggest beneficiaries, having received more than $37 million in gifts.
On October 3, the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley announced that Michener was donating manuscripts and other writings to the school to establish the only official repository of his works.
Michener earned a master's degree and taught at the school from 1936 to 1941. A library on the school's campus already bears his name. Motivated by health problems
Encountering serious health problems in the mid 1980s, Michener underwent quintuple by-pass surgery, and suffered an attack of permanent vertigo.
He wrote that his failing health served as a sort of wake-up call and it sparked one of the most industrious periods of his life.
Between 1986 and 1991, he wrote 11 books, a dramatic contrast to the three years he usually spent writing a single novel.
At the end of his autobiography Michener expressed his hope that young travelers aspiring to become writers would be encouraged by his life. But most of all, he said he wanted to be remembered by the row of his books resting on library shelves throughout the world. 'Unexpected' rewards
For Michener, his own adventures were compensation enough. Proof of that lies in his return visit years ago to the Pacific island of Bora Bora, where his cruise ship was welcomed by flotilla of native islanders in canoes.
"In the lead canoe they had a big throne," the writer recalled. "And a guy down among the warriors had a walkie-talkie. He shouted, 'James Michener, welcome to your island.'"
"They took me down the steps, put me on the throne (and) covered me with flowers. That's one of the rewards of writing a book about something. Your rewards reach you in the most unexpected ways."
CNN Correspondent Steve Nettleton, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Medal History
