Today is Alvin C. York Day. Ever heard of him? Probably not if you don’t live in Tennessee. He made quite a splash, back in his day. He was the “most well known soldier of World War I” and a movie was made about him in 1942, Sargeant York, for which Gary Cooper won the Academy Award.
York was a poor farm boy from Tennessee who joined a Christian sect that denounced killing and war. He was drafted in 1916, shortly before his 30th birthday. The government denied him conscientious objector status, so he went into the army where his commanding officer talked him into believing that it was right to defend his country.
The heroic act he became famous for happened on October 8, 1917. German machine guns were mowing down the Allied Forces. York, who was quite a sharp-shooter from hunting squirrels back in Tennessee, was ordered to take out the gunners, which he did. He, and the seven men left in his outfit, then captured 132 prisoners, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
York wasn’t proud of what he did or interested in getting a lot of publicity for doing it. But the media–then as now–loved to have something to crow about. So, York became a hero in spite of himself.
York died in 1964 after a long illness. What he said he wanted to be remembered for, and what he considered his greatest accomplishment, was not his wartime bravery but his support of education in rural Tennessee. The Alvin C. York Institute, an agricultural high school in Jamestown, Tennessee, was founded by him and is still in existence. It has the highest graduation rate of any high school in the state.
York fought his conscience through two world wars, waffling back and forth between his religious beliefs and the need he saw to protect his country.
He never wavered, however, in his belief in education. It’s a shame they didn’t make a movie about Alvin York the educator rather than Sargeant York the soldier. Maybe someday they will.
