Volume_29_Issue_3

Preservation & Progress Volume 29, Issue 3 3 You might wonder if this is a trick question. There were, after all, just over one million visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield in 2017. With 326 million Americans, that’s about three out of every one thousand Americans who chose to visit these sacred fields last year. Our partners at the National Park Service (NPS) do a superb job of interpreting the battle, adding each year to its scholarship, and keeping it relevant and exciting for guests. I was thinking about the question of Gettysburg’s relevance, however, after reading an article where Malcolm Gladwell wondered if Steve Jobs would one day be forgotten. The Steve Jobs? That sounded like another trick question to me, given the adulation the late entrepreneur still receives for his creation of the iPhone. Jobs remains relevant because, like you, I glance at my iPhone about a hundred times a day to check for messages. But futurists are already predicting the demise of the smartphone as we move to an era of wearables and interfaces that we command with our voices and gestures. When the iPhone is a dusty museum piece, what happens to the memory of Steve Jobs? For example, is Edwin Land still relevant? He was one of technology’s giants when I was in business school in the 1980s, and his Polaroid was considered an invention just short of magic. (I can still see those of you of a certain age waving it around and counting to 30.) I’m wondering, though, if I mentioned his name in a business school class today, how many would know who Land was? Consider Pearl Harbor, another tragic national event not unlike Gettysburg. Some twenty years ago I had Thanksgiving dinner with two WWII veterans. We were talking about car shopping when one announced, and the other agreed, that he would never purchase a car made in Japan. I was stunned. At the time, Toyota and Honda were among the best-selling autos in America. “Why?” I asked. “Because of Pearl Harbor,” one answered. “We’ll never purchase an auto made in Japan because of Pearl Harbor.” Their stance was a visceral reaction not to an historical event, but to a living memory. How faded is the memory of Pearl Harbor today, I wonder? Certainly, moving ceremonies in Hawaii mark the occasion each year. But my veteran friends are long departed. Maybe you can take an informal poll of the first ten people you bump into this December 7th and ask them why the day is special. If I did this on a street in Boston, I suspect I would find a few who remember Pearl Harbor, more who shrug, and the rest who would know that it was Larry Bird’s 62nd birthday. Memories are replaced quickly, even powerful national ones. The truth is, we forget things when they slip from memory to history. We forget things once they are no longer relevant to the present. We forget important things because we don’t work hard to keep them relevant. French historian Daniel Halévy wrote about the “acceleration of history,” a sense that the faster life comes at us, the faster our history fades. Few would disagree that we are living in the fastest of times. In 1960, according to NPS figures, 1.3 million people visited Gettysburg. The U.S. population that year was 180.7 million. That means more than seven Americans in every one thousand toured Gettysburg—more than twice as many as last year when measured against the total population. In 1970, more than 33 Americans in every one thousand visited the Gettysburg, ten times last year’s total. Even allowing for changes over time in how visitors to the Park are counted, it’s hard not to conclude that fewer and By Eric B. Schultz, Chairman of the Board WILL BE FORGOTTEN? Gettysburg