Much is being made, rightly so, about the late George H.W. Bush having been the last living president to have fought in World War II. In one respect, it is a wonder any president who served in that war still survived so long. World War II ended more than 73 years ago, which is 11 years longer than the full life expectancy of American men when the war began.
Yet one former major-party presidential nominee is still going strong, his wits fully about him. He’s one who, several times in 1945 and 1946, was seen as unlikely to live for 73 more hours, much less 73 more years.
The survival of Robert J. Dole of Kansas, now 95, is one of the most remarkable stories imaginable. Most Americans are only vaguely aware of the story of how he endured and thrived after grievous war wounds that left his right arm permanently crippled, his left arm partially numbed, and a piece of his spine crushed. But I defy any sentient human being to read What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer’s masterful deep-dive campaign and character account of the prime contenders for the presidency in 1988, without fighting back tears at the exhaustive description of Dole’s torturous road back from those injuries.
“At the hospital, nine hours after he was hit, they figured he was going to die,” Cramer wrote. “So they cleaned him up, splinted what they could reach … [At the next field hospital], they … cut him open wide, [to] see if they could spot anything pressed against the spinal cord. Capt. Woolsey was the surgeon, thought he might find out what the problem was. But when he opened Dole up, there wasn’t much to go by: nothing was in the right place, and half of it wasn’t there. They just sewed him up. Nothing more to do. If he lived, sure as hell, he was never going to walk.”
For page after page, Cramer described the agonizing months of recovery, including the time when a hospital called in Dole’s brother Kenny when Dole was wracked with what they thought was fatal pneumonia.
There was only one hope left, the doctors said, an “experimental drug” called streptomycin. “The Army had the only supply, a thirty-day dose for three patients. [Dole] would be the third.”
They asked Kenny to authorize the treatment. “Well, what happened to the others?” he asked.
The answer: “One died and one went blind, but he lived.” But Dole’s chances without it were “nothing.”
So they tried their very last dose on Dole. “Four days later, he sat up in bed, asked Kenny to go downtown and get him a milkshake.”
That was 1946.
Dole went on to serve in the House and Senate, as a vice presidential nominee, as runner-up for the presidential nomination, as Senate Majority Leader, and as presidential nominee. At age 77, he was treated for an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He has had hip replacement surgery, survived bleeding inside his cranium, had skin-graft procedures, survived three more bouts of pneumonia, and was hospitalized 24 days for low blood pressure.
Yet to this day, Dole spends almost every Saturday at Washington D.C.’s World War II memorial, greeting veterans there to thank them for their service.
As we remember the first President Bush this week, then, we should take a moment also to treasure the man still with us, who so long and complicatedly was sometimes Bush’s bitter rival, sometimes his ally and friend, and always co-bearer of the torch and values of the “greatest generation.”
