I re-read portions of this book after the tragic events of September 11 as a reminder to myself of the courage and unselfishness of past Americans who did their duty in a time of war. In 1945 Tibbets piloted a plane - which he called Enola Gay, after his mother - to the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where he dropped the atomic bomb. At the age of twenty-nine, at the request of his country, Tibbets assembled a secret team of 1,800 American soldiers to carry out the single most violent act in the history of mankind. All but anonymous even in his own city, carefully maintaining his privacy, this man, Greene's father would point out to him, had 'won the war.' He was Paul Tibbets. Greene's father - a soldier with an infantry division in World War II - often spoke of seeing the man around town.
When Bob Greene went home to central Ohio to be with his dying father, it set off a chain of events that led him to knowing his dad in a way he never had before - thanks to a quiet man who lived just a few miles away, a man who had changed the history of the world. OUR FIRST ANNUAL VETERANS DAY DISCUSSION!
