“Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.”
– Gus, a reader in Dothan, Alabama, says this after reading The Great Depression, as I remember, by 91-year-old Walter Stoiber, my uncle. CNN.com put his Guest Post on its home page this morning, and now Uncle Walt has hundreds of thousands of fans and 238 comments. Wow!
Lisa in southern Maryland writes, “Can I adopt Walter as my grandfather? ” Another reader, who calls herself susanintheheartland, says she read his reminiscence “to my five-year-old and I know it made an impression.” Comments came from all ages, nine to 90s. As Gus notes after reading about Walt helping his mother and sister, Charlotte (my mother, who died this year) scrape through the 1930s, “It doesn’t matter what you have, but who you have to surround you when times get hard.”
Several readers wrote in to debate whether “In God We Trust” (words that Walt says he lives by) was on U.S. currency during the Great Depression. Here are the facts on the U.S. Treasury website: “The motto IN GOD WE TRUST was placed on United States coins largely because of the increased religious sentiment existing during the Civil War. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase received many appeals from devout persons throughout the country, urging that the United States recognize the Deity on United States coins…IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin…The first paper currency bearing the motto entered circulation on October 1, 1957.”