by Ted Sherman

Created on: November 07, 2007

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is(he took a long pause for maximum effect) fear itself." Inspirational! Courageous! Over the top, boys, and wipe out all those bad guys! The legend is that FDR said it after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he used those words to rally American citizens to join in the war effort. Not true.

FDR said it at his January 1934 first-term inauguration. America was not at war then, at least not in the sense as it would be just seven years later. However, we were deeply mired in something almost as devastating. It was the Great Depression, and not many people living today can imagine the terrible fear that spread across the land, as unemployment hit more than 30 percent. Bankruptcies, bank closings, foreclosures wiped out life savings of families everywhere.

FDR, who became one of the most effective and revered Presidents, immediately set financial and employment plans into motion, and was instrumental in getting the country out of the depths and fears of one of the most devastating eras in American history. What fears was FDR addressing? The present. The future. Spreading poverty. Family break-ups. Foreclosure of the farm. Migrations of the unemployed and dislocated from farms and factories. He was saying, "Pick yourself up and we'll get through this together." He proved he was right, as Americans joined together as never before in history to beat back the fear.

From personal experience, I believe FDR's famous phrase applies to all forms of fear. There are many times in everyone's lives when fear strikes. No one can escape it, so the only alternative is to fight it. Just a decade after FDR spoke the lines, I was a 19-year-old Navy troopship crewman on the way WWII's Pacific campaigns. Did I feel fear? Of course, but at that clueless age, the only time it actually gripped me was when my ship was under fire or being attacked by enemy aircraft.

Ernie Pyle, the famed WWII war correspondent who was killed in the final battle on Okinawa wrote, "Every hour in war is composed simply of 59 minutes of crushing boredom and one minute of abject fear." That describes most of my Navy time in war zones, although I'm sure Marines and infantrymen can count many more minutes of fear out of their hours in combat. We knew fear had to be fought and overcome, and we always found ways to get through it.

I'm very old now, long past my life expectancy, and thankful that I survived two wars. Today my attempts to live without fear aren't

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