Missing History: Hey. Don't Talk to Them.

In my life, I've known or met:

• A man who knew veterans of the Civil War, worked in San Francisco after the great earthquake, and ridden the rails around the country before settling in territorial Arizona.
• A former schoolteacher whose classes were so poor that many students were barefoot. She had to teach the kids to play baseball and she umpired their games.
• An American criminal investigator who'd worked on sensitive cases with the French and German police.
• A Russian scientist who been wounded by a German sniper, thrown into a mental asylum by the regime in order to squelch his dissent, and then exiled. 
• A Tuskegee Airman who later created a successful business while working for civil rights.
• A former makeup artist who knew a variety of Hollywood stars. [He described Ronald Reagan as the nicest man he'd ever worked with.]
• A businessman with extensive dealings in Mexico whose Canadian grandfather was saved by Pancho Villa from execution.
• A former Air Corps navigator who flew bombing missions over Nazi Germany.

The list could go on. In retrospect, what stuns me is how little I asked them about their experiences.

We are surrounded by walking and talking graduate courses in history.